


Becoming a Cyborg

by Amicus_Cordis



Series: An Inquisitive Personality [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Aromantic Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Manipulative Lotor, Minor Matt Holt/Shiro, No Smut, Sexual Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, after season 3, and one other relationship but spoilers, just a lil Katie with a dream, no actual cyborgs, other characters present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-03-24 04:12:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13803159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amicus_Cordis/pseuds/Amicus_Cordis
Summary: Pidge is captured, and Katie is rescued, desperate to pretend the last year happened to someone else. But the resistance thinks she is a traitor, time may be up for Sam Holt, to find him she has to locate the team that left her behind, and the Prince of the Galra is not ready to lose her yet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Your warnings are in the tags but that list is non-exhaustive for spoilers sake. If you have concerns about triggers, message me (I don't bite!) and I will give you chapters/scenes to be wary of or let you know if you shouldn't read the story at all (for instance, if you are triggered by swearing, you should not read this story).

At the sound of the hangar door, Pidge cast aside her laptop and unraveled from her nestling spot between Green’s eyes to lean over the lion’s nose. Lance and Hunk had just stepped into the hangar, Lance with a plastic bag hanging off his elbow, Hunk bearing a plate of cookies. Her perch high on her lion was the only way to spot her in the room crowded with artificial environment chambers and other scattered tech viscera. “We were gone for five vargas,” Lance said, not daring to enter the disaster zone, “and it doesn’t look like you moved once.”  
  
“That’s because I haven’t. But I have great news!”  
  
“You found the planet Matt is on?”  
  
She snatched up the laptop and held it high, as if they could see the screen at the distance. “Not quite, but I found a seller of nanothermite titanium-boron in the Velurian quadrant who should be able to point me to the freedom fighters!”  
  
“Awesome, Pidge! We’re already in that quadrant, right? Need a partner to go chase him down with you?”  
  
At this, she slumped back down, laptop going to her legs. She already had a meeting scheduled with the vendor, but—she eyed Hunk as he shimmied between an impaled Galra sentry she intended to reprogram and an aquarium holding a tiny ecosystem from the planet of mermaids. She had already said too much that might get back to Shiro. Lance could hear later. “I think that’s it for today. What are you doing, Hunk?”  
  
He had stopped in front of another tank to eye the rose-like plant inside, a light pink even under the artificial blue light. “Trying to bring you chocolate chip cookies—with chocolate from the Earth store, mind you—but, does this flower have teeth?”  
  
With a few taps on her keyboard, an adjoining chamber to the tank opened, releasing three small, winged insects inside. “It’s a Herrastian Virtros plant,” she explained as the bugs flew at random, disoriented, but soon set their sights on the bright flower. With the exception of the planet Jefini, which had too many sacred laws surrounding its gardens, she had some form of plant life from every planet in the Voltron Alliance. All in tanks where they could not make her skin break out, but all connected. “They’re carnivorous. But since it’s in there, and you’re out here, you’ll be fine.”  
  
The bugs flew too close. The stem sprung out; the petals unwound to snatch them, impaling the insects on its teeth before closing around them. A dot of purple guts struck the glass. Hunk jumped and scooted on. “Staying far, far away.”  
  
“It’s no different than a meat-eating animal. Like, you know, us.”  
  
“Nope, not messing with it.”  
  
Lance watched, still by the door and on his toes to see over the maze. “Aaanyway, creepy plants aside, does the Pidgeon mind coming down from her nest? We have cookies and something very important to the team I just acquired.”  
  
Pidge cocked an eyebrow. “What is it?”  
  
The hangar door _whished_ open for the rest of the crew to file in, Keith in front. “You wanted us, Lance?”  
  
Lance lifted a fist of victory. “I am the god of great timing! Yes, Keith, I did!” With a grand gesture, he turned to everyone that had just come in. “While we were at the space mall, Hunk and I went back to that cool earth store and, unbeknownst to him, I found the ultimate team bonding game.” He pulled the bag off his elbow, grabbed whatever was inside, but waited to pull it out, keeping it concealed. “To open all doors, shatter all barriers, and reveal the true, filthy nature of us all, I give you—!” He yanked the box out of the bag. “Cards Against Humanity!”  
  
Pidge nearly fell off Green’s nose laughing. She found her balance, but her laughter only worsened at everyone else’s faces: Hunk had almost dropped the cookies as he stared in horror, Shiro twitched uncomfortably, Keith was unmoved, and Allura and Coran were equal parts confused and concerned. “This game sounds… violent,” Allura finally tried.  
  
“Only violent against your soul,” Lance declared with a sultry grin. “You coming now, Pidge?”  
  
She pat Green. “Guess I’m getting down. We should do this again sometime.”  
  
As Pidge climbed down to the lower jaw, Green bent over until Pidge was low enough to jump, laptop tucked under her arm. After a final affectionate pat, “Thanks, girl!” she jogged through the narrow path in the clutter to her teammates. Hunk had already returned when Lance plopped on the ground and started to wrestle the wrap around the game box. Hesitantly, everyone else sat near him, forming a circle. Pidge took place beside him, though reached around him to liberate a cookie from Hunk’s plate.  
  
“Got it!” Lance declared. He threw the static-filled wrapper to the side, right into Pidge’s face. She spluttered and swiped at it. “Alright, kiddies, prepare to lose what’s left of your childhood.”  
  
He explained the rules as he dealt, which spurred a Coran story of a similar sanity-ending Altean game that he and his companions used to play (he refused to dispel the details of any rounds with King Alfor, to Allura’s simultaneous dismay and relief). Pidge listened, because dirt should never be ignored, until Lance leaned close to her ear. “First one to blush loses?”  
  
She turned to him, to make sure he got the full glory of her smug smile. “I have a mind of steel, McClain.”  
  
They never learned who won.  
  
“We’re under attack! Everyone to your lions!”  
  
“Particle barrier down! It’s the comet ship!”

* * *

Pidge yelped and snapped up, sending the tablet tumbling off of her legs. She wasn’t sure what had woken her until the next strike, this one closer, that rattled the entire facility and made the wall to her left groan.  
  
She cradled the tablet in one arm as she leapt over her bed and landed at the panel by the door, assaulting the necessary commands. “Ezor! What the quiznak’s going on?”  
  
Moments passed, another explosion from somewhere else on the base, and then the familiar voice came through. _“I’m on my way, Pidgey! Stay there!”_  
  
Pidge removed her finger from the mic. “Because clearly there are other options.” And Ezor didn’t answer her question, which she should have expected, but she would at least like to know who was going to kill her before it happened. Bad enough that Voltron never came for her, could they be stupid enough to now kill her too?  
  
The shrill sound of metal tearing preceded the impact that threw her to the floor. One hand held her tablet close, the other shielded her head from falling debris. The shaking stopped. Pidge opened her eyes. A red light strobed, making her flinch, and she was sure if her ears were not ringing she would have heard an alarm to match.  
  
She pushed herself to sit up and in a sweep of her eyes assessed the situation. Aside from a jagged panel that had stuck in her calf, the large chunks of debris had missed her, though the fact she couldn’t feel her wound even with the blood that oozed out between skin and metal was reason for concern. Not ten feet above her head was the nose of a Galra fighter, the hatch busted and sentry inside sparking. Any more momentum in its fall and she would have been a shish kebab. The fighter had only dented the wall she had just been by, but the thin door had been crunched and partially dislodged, leaving a gap in one corner she could crawl through. For once, leaving actually was an option.  
  
Something sparked in the corner of her eye, and she noticed the steadily growing fire on the Galra fighter above her. Make that the only option. “Bae Bae, time for us to go. Bring the blanket.” Her own voice sounded distant, muffled as if through water, but her friend must have heard because he leapt off of her bed and dove through the gap in the door, a thin purple blanket trailing after him.  
  
Pidge rolled onto her stomach, ignoring the pain of tiny pieces of metal digging into her bare arms and legs and poking through her clothes. First, she slid the tablet through. It stopped in front of Ro-Bae’s front paws. The metal dog leaned over them, tail wiggling high in the air.  
  
She crawled through on her arms, arrested the blanket, ripped off a long strip, and used that to tie up her leg, careful to not push the shrapnel deeper. The meager wrap only slowed instead of stopped the blood. She had enough sense to not pull it out—it did not seem deep, but she wasn’t an expert in leg anatomy and if it could be in something vital.  
  
By the time she finished, enough of her hearing had returned for her to hear the alarm instead of just see the blinding crimson flashes. The air seal had broken, though the base’s defenses had sealed the breach before she could feel the effects. Good, asphyxiation was not in her top ten ways to kick the bucket.  
  
Ezor still had not arrived. But as Pidge’s hearing strengthened, she noticed the walls behind her creaking under the ship’s weight, soon to collapse. Her room was at the end of a hall, so there was only one direction for Pidge to run—except she fell as soon as she put weight on her right leg. Her arms and tablet took the worst of the fall, but the possible sprain in them was overshadowed by the flaring in her leg. She curled into a ball, hands hovering over the wound. “Come on, adrenaline, do your thing,” she hissed through gritted teeth.  
  
Ro-Bae nudged her shoulder with his cold, dry nose. “Right, going,” she murmured, and held onto him, then the wall, as she shakily stood. “Get my tablet.” With a yip, he obeyed and held it firmly in his mouth. Arms on the wall to support herself, she hobbled down the hall, careful to keep her weight on her left leg.  
  
A few times she came to offshoots in the barren narrow halls, always taking the one that lead away from the continued impacts, until she came to the main channel through the facility: the corridor was a few meters taller, and much wider, than any of the side halls. Black smoke billowed from the left, noxious and ash strewn. To the right, then, with the hope that Ezor wasn’t somewhere in the debris.  
  
She continued to hold onto the wall to move, but the blood had soaked through the blanket, run down her leg and wrapped around her bare foot before ultimately dripping to the floor, leaving a dotted trail behind her. Ro-Bae trotted at her side, bumping her good leg whenever she slowed down, urging her on. The smoke tried to cling to the ceiling, but grew too thick, lowering to dry Pidge’s eyes and burn her lungs until she began to hack. Ro-Bae had to rise on his hind legs and press on her side to keep her standing when the violent coughs dizzied her or an explosion knocked her balance.  
  
Ahead, she saw the smoke curl upward toward the high ceiling of a hangar. Pidge stumbled faster, until she was in the hangar and out of the smoke. She slumped against the wall, and though she could hear the crashes and tears of a near battle, she rewarded her burning eyes to close and took desperate breaths of clean air.  
  
“Pidge!”  
  
Ice skittered up her back. That voice, the same voice that had yelled, _“Hold off the Galra while everyone else gets to their lions!”_ as she was shoved into the Green Lion. Pidge twisted her head, opened her eyes. Shiro stared at her from the center of the hangar, sparking sentries mutilated at his feet. Her eyes met his, and his surprise wore off. He ran toward her.  
  
Pidge clambered against the wall, back to the smoke clogged corridor, but her run died before it started when she tried to step on her right leg. Pain tore from her foot up through her side, then into her shoulder when she hit the ground. Seething, she rolled onto her back and pulled her knee to her chest to grab her calf. The bandage squished under her fingers. Dammit stupid hurting leg.  
  
“…have the prisoner,” Shiro said, too close. Pidge snapped her eyes open, tried to scramble away, but Shiro’s human hand firmly took her shoulder. “Hey, hey, it’s just me.”  
  
“Hands off!”  
  
Pidge shoved at his shoulders, unable to force him away, but he retreated at her demand. He kneeled a few feet away, still too close, but Pidge’s leg seared and she couldn’t get away, just watch as he held up his hands. “You know me. Shiro. We just want to get you out of here. You’ll be safe.”  
  
Her breaths came short and heavy as she narrowed a glare at him. For months, she had in her head rehearsed exactly what to say if she ever saw him again, but her dry tongue had tied. She looked to Ro-Bae, but he had been programmed to not respond to her distress in others’ presence, so only wagged his tail.  
  
Shiro looked over his shoulder, and Pidge followed his gaze to an alien woman running into the hangar from the exit on the far side. “She’s over here!” Then his focus was back on Pidge. Shiro hesitated, then held up his hands, inched closer, like she were a frightened animal. What did he expect her to do, run? “Pidge. Katie. It’s Shiro, your friend. Your brother’s friend. Matt’s with us, too. Do you want to see him?”  
  
The glare melted off her face. Her tongue was no closer to working, but she could nod. Shiro came closer, though he was starting to feel far away, the air between them light and foggy. “I’m going to help you up now, okay?” She did not fight when he put her arm around his shoulders and his own around her waist. The world spun when he hoisted her up, blurring a painful white against the Galra purple. “Stay with me, Pidge, no passing out now. Yestra! She’s losing blood fast, help me get her—”  
  
Shiro was ripped from under her. Pidge was thrown forward with the impact, catching herself on an arm and taking the rest of the force with her chin, jarring her teeth. She propped herself up on her other arm, but could push herself up no further. There were noises, and flashes of color, but all Pidge could process was that her leg was throbbing and she was spitting blood and Matt was nearby. She even turned her head, expecting to see her brother, clad in a Garrison uniform and eager to skip the formalities and just get into space already.  
  
But he wasn’t there, just that alien woman, Yestra, who took Pidge’s arms and hauled her up so fast Pidge blacked out for a few ticks. When her vision came back, she saw Shiro again, locked in a fight against the one who had knocked him down. Ezor, her vibrant skin plagued with ash, and her movements lacking their usual acrobatic finesse. She was hurt. And there was someone else who might be hurt too. . .  
  
“No, stop.” The adrenaline came back. She was uncoordinated, blind, but stronger as she lashed at her captor. “I said stop! Let me go, dammit!” Slapping, punching, swiping, clawing. “I can’t leave! I have to—”  
  
She must have landed the lucky strike. Yestra dropped her. Pidge collapsed on her right leg. The shrapnel dug through her flesh until it struck bone, scraped across it. Pidge grabbed her leg, lacerating her hands on the shrapnel as she screamed. Her vision was white. She felt someone grab for her shoulder. Pidge thrashed, tried to sit up, but a damp hand on the side of her head pressed her into the floor. Something pinched her neck, and then she was just cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this in August, right after season three, as an exercise on what makes a character them and how to utterly destroy that (sorry Pidge). I wrote these six chapters, then season four came out and I realized I had an opportunity to explore Lotor and Zarkon sharing the Empire while canon no longer could, so then I wrote the next twelve, and then realized I should probably start posting this before it's two seasons behind instead of just one. I have updated it with some knowledge from season four, but please remember that this was written before we knew all we do now about Matt and the resistance, so some truths are different. For instance, Matt is not the one who gave her the nickname Pidge. Anywho, thanks to my lovely zucchini for beta-reading, and thanks to you lovely reader for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Free from finals at last to bring you the next chapter! Important warning, this story is not told chronologically. I like to think I provide enough context clues so you can figure out when each scene is, but I am not as smart as I think I am, so! The "present" is the second scene in each chapter, starting with when our Pidgeon was taken from captivity last chapter. These are always in chronological order. The first scene in each chapter takes place sometime in the "past." These are not necessarily in chronological order. There is a method to the madness.

Pidge had snooped as much as was reasonable to snoop while still appearing innocuous. The cell—room—place, was three meters squared, furnished by bed and adjoining bathroom and nothing more. The panel by the door could interface with non-Galra, but was still only written in a Galra script so that she learned its functions by trial and error. After accidentally turning on and quickly shutting off a panic alarm—and, more importantly, not finding any way to open the door, or pry off the panel to get behind it—she found on the final function a way to lower the lights. They would not turn off, only dim to 5%, feeding her suspicions that they had cameras on her. But she could not search for those without being obvious in intent, so she surrendered to the bed and draped an arm over her eyes.

It was the closest to darkness she had experienced in. . . movements? Phoebs? The Druids had always kept her in the light. Pulsing, migraine-inducing light. This room’s glow was a little too purple, but with imagination, the faint glow in near-darkness could be likened to that of a laptop screen long after lights-out, and for the first time since the comet ship shot the Green Lion, she breathed easy.

Where even was her laptop? The floor of Green’s hangar, probably. If she was lucky, Lance had taken it to his room to follow up on her search for Matt. She had too much security on it for Lance to ever gain access, but it was a nice thought.

She would pick up the search herself soon. Whatever development had led to her being in this room, she was, for the first time, unrestrained. The ever-present shackles on her wrists had been removed and the chafing underneath gone—unusual, since the Druids had only ever healed her when they brought her too close to the brink. Regardless, her hands were free, so once she understood why she was there, she could make a plan to get out. She could vaguely recall her time before waking up in this new room: strapped to a table, voice too hoarse to scream anymore, a Druid standing over her demanding the other paladins’ identities until someone with long white hair and a vaguely familiar voice drew the Druid’s attention and it released its magical grip long enough for her to pass out. The new room wasn’t exactly a torture chamber, and lacked the haunted aura of the Druids **,** so their new approach for information could not be any worse.

Still, her heart rate spiked and she snapped upright when she heard the door open. She flinched at the once again bright lights and squinted under a hand at her savior apparent. The long white hair she had seen before. The purple skin was just too soft to be true Galra, and the smile she could not read save for its confidence. Even though she had never seen him properly, she knew at once why his voice had been familiar: she had heard it in a trap off of Puig.

He had a tablet secured under one arm, and extended his other as he approached. Pidge pushed to her feet, for security of movement more than politeness, but the corner of his lips continued upward regardless. “I am Prince Lotor.”

She did not introduce herself. Her throat was still scratched and bloody from quintants of screaming under Druid hands. She shook his hand. Recognizing her unwillingness to speak, he said, “I am honored to meet you, Katie.”

Her hand tightened around his. He could not know that name. He had no way to, and he was not allowed to. Katie was going to go home to Earth with her dad and brother and be far, far away from this awful war. “Pidge,” she stated, as forcefully as she could, but with her sore throat it was little more than a hiss.

“Pidge,” he repeated, and smiled when she nodded. “I am honored to meet you, Pidge, Green Paladin of Voltron.”

She pulled her hand away. “Former Green Paladin.”

“But you’re the one who raised an alarm among Galra ships about a supernova in the Faurus quadrant so that Galra forces would retreat long enough to establish Coalition defenses, who altered the navigation systems of twenty Galra fleets so that their rendezvous point was at the entrance of a black hole, and who planted a turncoat virus in the Storth BAHZ factories that infected nearly two hundred thousand sentries before it was caught. I could go on. Every measure Imperial technicians have taken to keep you out has been bested with mere minutes of your attention.”

He did not look upset at her accomplishments against the Empire. Impressed, maybe. She only shrugged, and restrained herself from crossing her arms at his curious stare. No one had studied her that intently since her mother had made sure she looked sufficiently not-like-a-girl in Matt’s cadet uniform. But that was her mother, and this was some alien, so she had to resist a squirm or twitch.

“They have said that the personality of a Lion is reflected in its paladin.” He spoke as if to himself, but his eyes did not once leave hers. “For the Green Lion, inquisitive, curious, undoubtedly brilliant.”

“Not like I was the only brilliant one in Voltron,” she stated dryly, her throat painfully protesting at so much speech. Her fingertips brushed her temple in an instinctive reach to adjust Matt’s glasses—but she had left them in Green’s cockpit after they had been captured, and they would have still been there when Green was flown out of captivity movements later. The new green paladin had them. “They’ll manage just fine without me.”

His smile did not waver, nor his gaze, as if enraptured by her every word. “I did not mean to imply they wouldn’t. Voltron is a fascinating warrior, built up by the strong, diverse personalities of its many paladins. While you are perhaps their greatest loss, the other paladins have not yet shown all of their potential. I only meant that I will enjoy getting to know you instead of just hearing the rumors.”

“The rumors are better.” Holts had never been known for their modesty, but flattery fell flat from the mouth of the man whose attack brought her here in the first place. She could still feel that final moment of Green’s pain before the lion went dark and they were caught in a tractor beam. “I don’t actually telepathically communicate with computers and I’m a miserable alchemist.”

The last one got a response, the tiniest widening of his eyes that she couldn’t quite understand. Then it was gone. “I hadn’t known those rumors yet, though I would enjoy hearing about them.” He retrieved the tablet from under his arm, though paused when she recoiled at the sudden movement. “I am sorry for the condition we found you in, but the Druids cannot reach here. You are safe from them.”

She did not respond, but as she appeared no more skittish, he offered the tablet. She turned it over in her hands. The hardware was inaccessible without tools she did not possess. The corners were rounded so it was not suitable for stabbing. She could do little more than hit someone over the head with it. “How long was I with them?”

“Just under a phoeb. Officially, you are my prisoner, and I am interrogating you for information on Voltron, since Haggar and her Druids have gotten no results. I am still prince, however, and cannot always be here to ‘interrogate’ you.”

Her nose wrinkled against her meaning to, at the implication both of a lack of interrogation and of the tablet being meant for her entertainment. The illusory kindness was more foreboding than if he had entered with a scourge **.** She switched on the tablet, to be greeted by a screen of Latin script and Arabic numerals. Her hands clenched on the sides of the tablet. She turned her eyes on Lotor. “What happened to Earth?”

His eyebrows rose, curious, at the threat in her voice. “Nothing has happened.” She held his gaze. “I would assume you’ve known we have had our eye on it. A cruiser was there the day that the Blue Lion left it. However, your planet has few valuable resources, and until such time as another komar is built, it offers no benefit or threat to the Empire. You needn’t be concerned for it.”

Pidge held his gaze, distress growing as she realized she would never know if he was lying. Reading people was difficult enough assuming they were honest; she was hopeless to spot a lie. If they wanted to take Earth, though, they would have done it when they first breached Kerberos. She latched onto that thought and looked to a point to the side of his eyes. “And my being from there won’t change that?”

“Perhaps if you were still with Haggar, but I have no desire to antagonize you.” He smiled, but this time she knew for certain he was a prince. She had frequently seen a milder version of that smile on Allura. Much milder. “I have only respect for you, Pidge. I hope you can find some peace here. You are my honored guest.” It was an amicable smile in all obvious manner, but in something Pidge could not pinpoint, there was a threat, that the wearer had veins filled with acid. Should someone make them bleed, the greatest danger would be to the one holding the knife. With Allura, she knew only an Empire-level atrocity would get her burned. Allura had restraint. But she could not guarantee that safety with Lotor, so when he held out his hand once more, she accepted it, and did not recoil when he held her fingers to his lips.

Then he was away, but the cameras surely still watched, so she occupied herself with the tablet to resist wiping his kiss off on the prison garb.

* * *

 

The bed was wrong. Too hard and cold. Pidge opened her eyes. Her vision was blurred, but she did not find the stagnant purple of the Galra, or the gentle whites and blues of the Castle of Lions, just unfamiliar rusty browns and reds cast in a dirty yellow light. She listened, but there was only the hum of the light and her own pulse increasing dangerously in her ears.

A shadow disturbed her periphery. She sprung upright but immediately coiled into herself. Her eyes squeezed shut, teeth tight on her tongue against the burning of a hundred cuts in her arms and torso, and one particular blaze in her leg. She wavered under the pain. Shaking hands grappled at the sides of the medical bed to hold herself upright.

Fingers grazed her shoulder through thin fabric, the touch faint but enough to make her jump. Fresh pain tore into her leg, but she forced her stinging eyes open to face the one touching her. Her attendant was small, half a meter shorter than herself, of a species with soft, rounded features. “Be easy,” he said in a soft, lilted voice. The fingers stroked her back, leaving a tingle of warmth that eased her heart from going too fast. “Do you remember where you were?”

The question felt difficult. “Galra prison.”

“An otherwise abandoned outpost, actually.”

The information was new, but unsurprising. She blinked against a blur in her eyes to survey the infirmary. One exit, two meters from the foot of the bed. Her eyes drifted to the left, where a table held a scalpel, pliers, squishy red rags, a cup with tiny shards of bloodied shrapnel, and the one larger shard that had been in her leg. Whenever she moved, something sticky crinkled against her skin—bandages, all across her torso, on her forearms where she had crawled, and on her legs, visible out from under the hem of her knee-length tunic. The bandages were thickest at her right calf. It hurt like hell, but not enough. Nerve damage.

Before she could be distraught, the hand was rubbing her back again. The warmth followed a trace up her spine. “Do you know how long you were there?”

“Three hundred twenty-four quintants.” The answer was mechanical, the number etched by rote every morning. He hummed, and the warm feeling continued to the base of her skull.

“Why did Lotor want you?”

“Paladin.”

“What did you do for him? Tell him about Voltron, build something for him?”

The hand on her back was uncomfortable. She leaned forward, but it followed. Her words slurred even in her own ears. “I’m not a traitor.” And she _wasn’t_ , yet she knew she had no way to reasonably justify being the sole occupant of an abandoned outpost, justify the tablet, the fight to stay behind, the robot companion— “Where’s my dog?”

The question was unbidden, her tongue loosened from resistance. The warmth had wrapped around her head. One of her hands gripped the near table for balance. The man at her side continued to stroke her back. “Why did he want you specifically?”

“I’m his–” A wall was there. The haze was still on her mind, the only thing keeping her from realizing _bad idea_ as her left hand latched onto a scalpel and swung. He yanked his arm out of the way, his hand slipping off her back and taking the haze with it so that when the door opened, panic finally snared her. Pidge flung herself off the bed, but landed hard on her right foot – she felt the long rip of the stitches in her calf – her legs gave out, and then she was on the floor, staring at white bandages turn scarlet, and an arm had just wrapped around her under her arms when she blacked out.

When she came to, everything was slow and heavy. Damn blood loss. She tried to sit up. When her abdominal muscles failed her, she tried to grab the edge of the bed for leverage, but something cold bit into her wrists. Her hands were chained to the bed. Breathless curses slipped from her mouth as she yanked against the cuffs, kicked against ankle restraints, until human hands laid over her arms, pressing them to the bed to stop her struggles. “Hey, hey, don’t do that. You’ll just hurt yourself.”

Her head snapped to the source of the voice, to long tawny hair and a scar on his cheek and the Holt brown eyes that still glittered in his smile. “Breathe for me, Katie.”

With his urging, Katie stuttered out a breath, then another, until she could choke words through her dry throat. “You’re okay.”

Matt released her arms so that he could brush her clumpy hair from her forehead. “Yeah, I’m okay. Pretty great, actually.”

She wanted to touch him too, to make sure he was real, but the restraints dug into her wrists. “Can you get these off?”

“Sorry, Kit-Kat. I could, but then I couldn’t get them back on, and I’m not supposed to be in here.” But the hand not brushing at her hair did lace fingers with hers, and she curled her fingers tight, thumb feeling over his hand. “I’m friends with the guy guarding right now, but I can’t stay long.”

She fucked up. She knew she did, even if Matt was acting calm. If they had just _asked_ her, instead of trying to use some incoherency charm shit, she might have been able to talk her way out of it, but instead of answering their questions, she had broken that man’s control and attacked him. No smooth talking would convince them she was on their side now. It had never been her strength anyway. “Am I on the chopping block?”

That was enough to earn a small frown. “They don’t know what they’re going to do, but Shiro and I are going to get you out of here before they decide. So just sit tight for a while. Not that you have a choice. Me thinks the invalid, next time she wants to make her great escape, should consider the guy who’s had to give her two blood transfusions.”

“Lotor has Dad.”

Katie hated herself as soon as she said it and shied away from Matt’s tense hand. His expression pulled into a thin, careful cold. “Where?”

“Still in a work camp, I think. But he knows he’s related to me and now I’m gone. You need to get Keith to ask the Blade of Marmora if they’ve seen any humans in the work camps recently.”

“We don’t have any contact with Voltron.”

He stated it as a simple fact, as if it were obvious, expected, yet she stared, waiting for an explanation that did not come. “Shiro’s the one who busted me out. You _just_ said he was going to help me get out of here.”

“He hasn’t been in contact with Voltron since he was teleported to me after the fight against Zarkon fifteen phoebs ago.”

“Then who the hell was the bastard with the bad haircut using his name when I was captured thirteen phoebs ago?”

The hand brushing her hair halted. “I. . . I have no idea, but Shiro’s been here with me. Didn’t he disappear from the fight? The one with the Blade of Marmora, where you put Galra HQ through a wormhole?”

“He did. And then he came back a few movements later saying he had escaped from the Galra.”

“Well _my_ Shiro poofed into my arms, literally, saying he had just been in the cockpit of the Black Lion fighting Zarkon, and has been by my side ever since.”

Her head _thunk_ ed against the metal table so she could scowl at the ceiling. “Great, now we have to actually go find Voltron. . . which I know how to do. In theory.” She had not thought about it since her first phoebs taken, when she had plotted every minute detail of her intended return. Her memory was not its best, but hopefully good enough. “I studied the Altean interfaces in the Castle of Lions and, more importantly, the Lions, to understand the energy translation, and I think I know how to replicate it to put me and Shiro in contact with our respective lions.” Her head lolled to look at her brother once more. “I need you to pull some things together for me.”

“Just tell me what you need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shitpost with me on [Tumblr!](https://amicuscordis.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

Dehydration was shit.

Pidge’s flesh had been replaced with lead. Lead that could have muscle cramps, a sandpaper mouth, a migraine, a too-big needle stinging her arm, and no capacity to move without making each of these worse. At some point, she had passed out, probably, because people were hovering in the room and then they suddenly weren’t, and a water pouch had been set against her side. She had drunk all of that—slowly, after an initial chugging attempt made her gag— but otherwise she could only chew on the straw and stare at the purple ceiling and _think_ , and raw thinking without opportunity for application had never worked to her favor.

She was still with Lotor, instead of the Druids, and the needle in her arm was rehydrating instead of euthanizing her, which was. . .a start. She would not call it good yet. She sort of remembered Lotor, as he unchained her half-dead from the foot of the bed, not caring when Lieutenant Thrash told him about her attempted escape. So, whenever her heart decided to try to tear its way out of her chest, she reminded herself that maybe he understood that, under the guard of someone a little too pleased to have power over a former paladin, escape would be an act of survival rather than an act of rebellion.

Or their unspoken game was still on. The Druids had failed to make her talk with torture, so Lotor was getting to try to win her affection. Rescuing her from Thrash would just be the next in a line of pretenses, just like the tablet, just like kissing her. Surreal as it was, that had been his only move that she had been able to predict, though she was unsure how else anyone could have interpreted his gradual progression into her personal space over the quintants and the damned constant looking at her lips. Even so, it so completely annihilated her previous worst embarrassing-disgusting memory that she could for the first time forgive her nine year old self. Puking on her favorite teacher after a spite-fueled milk-drinking dare was bad but mentally remediable. She had even laughed about it with Lance and Hunk. Once she escaped, however, the game would be locked away where not even she could find memory of it and certainly no one else.

It got easier after the first time. Sort of. For no reason other than her determination to be the one to win the game. She knew nothing of his existing attractions, but she already had the trump card: aromanticism. She would sooner win him than he could ever hope to win her.

(Pidge had won over exactly one person in her life and had interest to win over even less. She could not even be sure about acquiring the fancy of the one—Lance _had_ stopped flirting with Allura and other women, yes, and then days before her capture seemed genuinely pouty when she gave a nonresponse to his pickup line. But Lance would flirt with a mop. Regardless, the thought of making Lotor fall for her was stupid hilarious and, more importantly, it was a goal, something more concrete than Survive-Until-The-Great-Escape, and a goal gave her the willpower necessary to not throw up in her mouth when he would be able to taste it.)

So she wasn’t worried. But when the door opened, she snapped upright, straw falling into her lap, and only caught a glimpse of that white hair before her vision was black and a fresh headache began its onslaught. Her heart was violent again. She pressed her palms to her eyes. “Sh-Shit.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She pulled her hands away and blinked through the black dots. He actually looked concerned, standing by her bed. Game still on, then. “Rather you than someone else.” Namely, Thrash or Druids.

His finger brushed across her split lip, where she could still taste blood, and Pidge half expected him to kiss her and suck on the spot because of course a Galra would be a _fucking vampire_.

(She almost took that back before remembering she no longer cared if Keith would get offended.)

He didn’t kiss her, just stared at the wound with that contemplative, dreary expression before his gaze drifted to her neck and the bruises of long, thick fingers. Then he withdrew his hand. Under his other arm, she saw her confiscated tablet. “I am sorry for Commander Thrash’s treatment. She will be taken care of.”

She plucked the straw from her lap and returned it to between her teeth. “That’s a euphemism on Earth. For killing someone.”

He hummed, whatever the hell that meant, and sat on the edge of the bed. His hand hovered above her knee before resting on it, as if she might object to the contact. Which she would have liked to. Somehow, it was more intimate than sucking face. She scooted back a few inches to lean against the wall, but his hand stayed in place as her leg glided beneath it, coming to rest instead on her shin. That was inexplicably worse, and she was suddenly very aware that they put a weapon, that giant needle, right in her arm but any attempt to use it would make her pass out before she could even get close to him. Fuck.

He removed his hand, _thank god_ , and presented the tablet to her. “I found this in command **.** ”

Pidge made a point of taking the tablet slowly, as if she had not become despicably attached to it in her short time with it, as if Thrash’s taking it had not sparked the impromptu flight for freedom. Since she survived, she could say that her temporary escape had some benefits in what she learned: that she was not in Zarkon Central Command anymore; that wherever she was had no personnel or other prisoners, just her, the lieutenant, and several sentries; and that the panel in her room was the only technology that did not require Galra DNA to operate. But no system was unbreachable. She could have had control of the place if she had managed to stay hidden for a varga more. Or had that very tablet with her. “Thanks.”

She turned it on. Her jaw tightened. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“She wiped it,” she said, voice even, because she could not panic because she _was not attached._ Her fingers were moving before her mind could catch up, a new code to keep her occupied. “It was just a game.”

“A game?”

“A video game, based on an Earth one.” Anything she put on the tablet was at risk of being confiscated and evaluated, rendering it useless for an escape aid, so she had decided to take a note from Ezor’s insistence on calling her Pidgey and set about creating her own installment of the cherished series. “You’re a trainer that catches these creatures called Pokémon and trains them to battle others. You wanna be the very best, like no one ever was.”

“So Earth games are combat based?”

“Not all of them. This one’s just hitting a ball back and forth.”

It was her fault, she supposed, for referencing the game he could not see. He stood and took a new seat on the bed leaning against the wall to her left. Technically, he was not looking over her shoulder, but people who snooped from the side belonged in the same circle in hell, next door to the people who invade others’ personal space. She made a point to not move away until the game was up, a black screen with two short lines on either side and a dot in the middle. “Okay, I’m player one, you’re player two. Use your finger to guide the stick, and don’t let the ball get past you. If one of us gets it past the other person, we get a point. First to five points wins.”

The explanation was insufficient, and awarded her a point before he could grasp it. He draped an arm over her shoulders—she resisted a shrivel—to continue playing with his left hand instead. Now acquainted, the ball went back and forth, back and forth. “I would assume most Earth games are more complex than this.”

“Considering I just made this in three doboshes, yes. This is like, the original video game, from just over a century ago. Everything was VR when I left Earth.” The tech was fascinating, but after she altered the game on Matt and Shiro on time too many while they were immersed and defenseless, she had stuck to vintage to escape their revenge. “What about Galra?”

“Virtual reality has always been used for military preparation. If such resources were used for entertainment, I was not exposed to it, but my childhood can hardly be considered the average.”

Back, and forth. Back, and forth. “So what happened?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You were banished, right?” she asked, and before he could be offended by her forthrightness added, “You tell me your treason story and I’ll tell you mine.”

“You’ve committed treason?”

“They said my dad died on a project for them, I called bullshit, broke into their base, and got the proof I needed.”

“What was your father like?”

“He’s. . . great.” And possibly the only other human in the Galra Empire, and she couldn’t risk Lotor knowing that when she escaped. “Probably worried sick about me on Earth.”

He was quiet. She darted a glance up to him and started at their accidental eye contact. He was frowning. An angry frown, a disappointed frown, a sad frown, she didn’t know, but regardless he knew she was lying. Did his lie detector suddenly start working, or, did he know where her father really was? He had known the name Katie. . .

Pidge was great at skirting the truth – everyone at the Garrison just assumed she was a boy without her ever having to explicitly say it, as she had wanted – but outright lying was another matter, and with each stuttered word he looked less and less believing of what she said. As Matt would say, the best way to tell a lie was to tell the truth. “My dad was a genius, but he wasn’t really into tech the way I was. He was more a biology guy. He still kept up with tech developments, though, so that he could talk with me about it.”

Player 2 had gained a point in her distraction. They were tied for two. When Lotor spoke, his voice was just soft enough she knew they had moved past the lie. “He sounds like a good father.”

“He was great. Mom too, and—” Matt, but the less Lotor knew about him, the better. “Bae Bae.”

“Bae Bae?”

“My dog. Animal companion, pet, sanity, do the Galra have anything like that?”

“It is not common, but some have kept creatures they have endeared themselves to. I for a long time had my mother’s cat that I brought with me into exile. Narti has since taken Kova for her eyes, but I would not deny that, when it was just the two of us, it was Kova that brought me through those first decaphoebs.”

She had to look at him, too jarred by the words and the soft tone, and no more eased by his look of concentration that went beyond their game. He was looking back in time, just like she was, to when she was ten and years of peer harassment climaxed in Mom pulling her out of school midweek. She had cocooned herself in blankets on the couch for two whole days before Dad opened the front door and a puppy jumped on her and began to lick her tears away.

_Dammit,_ they were not going to bond over animals and isolation. Besides, homeschooling had turned out to be the best decision of her life, and she still had her family and home, while exile was a complete uprooting of everything he knew, and _shit,_ was she pitying him now? That was almost worse than finding commonality.

When he found her eyes, an eyebrow raised, she averted to the screen to find he had scored. Four to three in her favor. “You still haven’t told me how you got exiled. I did mine, pay up.”

“Zarkon was responsible for the loss of my mother. Openly confronting the lord of the universe is not something he has stopped despising me for.”

Her hand twitched, making her stick jump and Lotor score yet again. Tied at four. “Zarkon’s still alive?”

“Yes. I was only called to lead the Empire until he regained his strength, and am now ruling alongside him, since many Galra have expressed favor for my methods.”

Discord between Zarkon and Lotor was almost good enough to cancel her worry at his survival. She quelled her excitement to dryly ask, “Your methods?”

“I disagree with his invading and enslaving of planets and their ultimate destruction to deplete them of quintessence. I prefer to negotiate an alliance that allows us to mine only enough quintessence as can be replenished and lets the people continue to rule themselves while benefitting from the Empire’s vast trading system.”

“And you can honestly say that all of these planets would still agree to an alliance if you didn’t have the strength of the Empire behind you?”

“I cannot. Consider, though, that within a few decaphoebs, the Empire will invade Earth. If Zarkon leads the invasion, he will either enslave the entire planet, or take the strongest few for slaves and gladiators and leave the rest to perish when his witch drains the planet of quintessence with the new komar she is constructing. If I can lead the invasion, Earth need simply provide aid to the Galra when necessary and otherwise can live as it always has. The Empire will continue to expand regardless. Which would you prefer?”

The ball passed her stick. _Player 2 Wins!_

* * *

 Three times someone came to change her bandages, pretending the patient was a cadaver. Katie assumed that meant three quintants. Three quintants, with nothing to do but count the specs of rust on the ceiling and on the walls in her periphery. The searing in her leg gave her something to focus on most of the time. They did not risk an infection with her, even wrapping her wrists and ankles when she tore them on the cuffs during panic attacks, but pain killers were too kind for the traitor, apparently.  Her betrayal had been sealed in their minds when some commander came in to ask about her Imperial imprisonment, no mind manipulation involved this time, and did not believe that pushups and video games were believable occupations for a prisoner. In their eyes, she had to be hiding something that aided the Empire. But Matt was going to get her out soon so she didn’t give a damn.

At least, she hoped he would. More than once, she wondered if the pain and blood loss had made her delirious and she just imagined his visit.

But when the door opened on the third quintant, she looked anyway, and her hopes did not go unfulfilled. Matt set two staffs against the wall, dropped some clothes on the stool next to the bed, then came to her side, pulling a short metal stick from his belt. “Brace yourself.” He stabbed the stick against her restraint. The electricity only tickled across her skin, but the manacle snapped violently, freeing her wrist. He did the same to the other and the ankle cuffs, put the tool back on his belt, then took her arm and pulled her to sit up. “We have to—”

He “oomph”ed as she cut him off with a vice around his waist and a forehead on his chest. His arms went around her shoulders and squeezed her to him, and her shredded torso complained but Katie pushed the pain away because she had needed to hold him for too long dammit.

Matt did not let her go even when he said, “We really have to hurry. There’s only a small window for ships to get out undetected by the Galra. Shiro’s waiting for us in the hangar.”

She released him, but stopped one hand in front of him and gave his firm stomach a hard poke. He squeaked and jumped away, arms clamped over his stomach as he gave her an offended pout. “You actually have abs now.”

“And you still have none!” he said as he let one hand leave its job of protecting his waist to jab her own stomach. She grimaced and curled around the spot, the pressure only making it hurt worse, but she couldn’t uncoil her muscles. Matt jumped and put a hand on her shoulder, babbling apologies until she could sit straighter. “I. . . guess I was wrong. Impressive.”

She looked up to him, not sure what to think of that high note in his voice, or the searching look knitted with worry. It took her several ticks to realize it was not because of the pain in her stomach. “It was keep in shape or go crazy with boredom.”

She had not been in any fights. Or any arenas. His worry vanished, he took a step back and unceremoniously dumped the clothes from the stool on her lap. “Put those on.”

She shifted through the articles, all like what Matt was wearing. She looked back to him, but he had started digging through a cabinet against the wall, letting his cloak shroud all but his hair and boots. “Hey, let me see how you wear this.”

He took that to mean pose, because when he turned back around, he stuck his leg up on the stool and sensuously draped himself over it.

“Dork.”

He winked. “Shiro digs it.”

Matt returned to the cabinet, and now that she had seen how he layered it, Katie pulled off the tunic and, mindful of her useless leg, assembled the rebel gear. “Stealing medical supplies?”

“Just for the invalid.” He dropped the last items in a bag, then sealed it and threw it over his shoulder, leaving a single filled syringe in his hand. Katie had put on all but the cape and boots by then, about to tie on the former when Matt held up a hand to stop her. “Neck.” She grimaced, but tilted her head and pulled her stringy hair aside. His hand on her shoulder relaxed her, and after a small wince from the shot, much of her pain became a dull ache. All ignorable, except for her damn leg.

She tied her boots as Matt secured the cloak around her shoulders and slipped a mask over her face. Then he took her hand, but did not yet help her stand. He tapped her hand with his thumb until she looked up at him. “If you rip your stitches again I’m going to have to tourniquet your leg. So have some self-preservation for once. If it’s too much strain, I’ll carry you out of here. Okay?”

When she nodded, he reached back for one of the staffs and gave it to her. Gently, he brought her to her feet, until she could support herself on her own with the staff. Using the staff as a crutch, she took the first hobbling step, no weight on her right leg. A thumbs up to Matt, and he took up his own staff and knocked on the door.

The Puigan that was supposed to be her guard ducked into the room. Matt pulled the tool off of his belt. “Give Te-Osh my regards.”

“It’s been an honor, Matthew.”

The Puigan grimaced, but did not resist as Matt tazed him. Matt caught him, set him gently on the floor, then nodded for Katie to follow him out the door. “Shiro’s waiting for us.”

Only Katie’s and one other room were sectioned off in the infirmary. The rest was a large room lined with rows of cots. No one noticed them leave the once guarded room, because through the wide doors at the other end, stretchers of the whimpering and the unconscious were being pulled into the room and deposited on the beds. After phoebs of near isolation, the sudden exposure to over a dozen writhing bodies doused in a spectrum of blood had her dizzy. “Did anyone get hurt saving me?” she whispered, voice distorted by her mask.

“We lost a few unmanned ships, but Shiro and Yestra were the only two personally involved.”

They slipped out the door around the stretchers. The hangar was only down a short corridor, to allow the quickest care for the incoming injured. A large transport blocked the door to the planet above, hastily parked to begin moving the injured that still filed past them. Matt had explained to her in his first visit to her room that they were underground on a planet marked desolate by the Galra, allowing them relative peace as they worked with near systems for liberation. Unfortunately, the Galra had in the last decaphoeb started a fighter pod factory in the same system, limiting movement in and out of the rebel base to certain planet and lunar cycles when they would be hidden from the Galra security. Once the hangar door closed, it would not open again for at least a movement.

But if they got beyond it, they were unlikely to be pursued, lest the resistance expose themselves.

Down a row of vacant pods was one with an open hatch and Shiro in the cockpit, still in the paladin armor he had been wearing when Black sent him away. Matt tossed his staff up to him, Katie following. “Are you sure this thing can go in deep space? Pods this size usually don’t fly far from the nest.”

Matt hoisted himself inside, then leaned over the edge, arms extended for hers. “It’s designed for long distance stealth missions. We can hit light speed just as well as a cruiser.”

She hesitated, because abs or not he was still scrawny and she had a dead leg to stop her from climbing. But when they took each other’s wrists, he fluidly pulled her onto the edge of the cockpit. Behind him, Shiro said, “You shouldn’t lift with your back.”

Her _apparently ripped_ brother stuck his tongue out. “I am a grown man and have the freedom to kill my back if I want to. How am I supposed to lift with my legs from way up here anyway?”

“Who you got with you there, Matt?”

Katie’s heart beat violently, but Matt just said, “My new pal Wicket. I’m mentoring.”

A few meters away was the tall, long-fingered officer who had asked, able to spare them only the occasional glance between looking at the stream out of the transport and the datapad in her hand. “And where are you off to? I don’t remember any listed outbound flights this round.”

“One of our outposts has gone quiet so we’re going to investigate.”

The officer tapped at the pad. “They don’t need you in command?”

“Ker’s going to cover for me. Although I may have forgotten to ask her.”

A few more ticks of staring at the data pad, “Ah, there it is. They’ll be unloaded in two doboshes and then the transport will move out of your way.” She faced them with a smile, face glowing from somewhere deep beneath the skin. “The rest of the ships are staying with Kaline until the next cycle to help them establish their new government. We did good today.” The hangar door began to shut. The officer put a long finger to the side of her headset. “Hey, keep that open, we have one going out. Yeah, I know, it just came through.”

The pod only had two seats, one occupied by Shiro. Matt squeezed into the little space between and behind them, sharing the floor with the parts Katie had asked him to collect. She maneuvered herself to the seat, seething when she accidentally jarred her leg but otherwise without event. Then Shiro pulled the hatch down, and they were sealed inside, the din of the busy hangar smothered by the soundproof cover.

No one said anything. So at least she was not the only nervous one. Shiro’s hands were already wrapped around the controls, ready to take them the tick that the transport moved. Katie leaned forward to see around him to the darkness beyond the hangar door. She had not seen the sky in a decaphoeb–not since Green’s viewscreen went dark. Then it had been phoebs of being connected to nothing but tight purple walls.

Just a few more doboshes.

As the loading ramp retracted into the transport, the pod’s comm alerted them. “ _Hey, guys, I don’t see a signature here. Who authorized you?”_

Through the hatch, Katie could see the officer glancing between them and her data pad. The glow had left her face, lips pulled into a line, but she did not seem otherwise suspicious. Shiro turned on the mic. “Lieutenant Ozar.”

She looked back to her pad, then put a finger to her ear, but her voice did not come to them this time. The transport began to move aside, clearing their path out of the hangar. Shiro turned the pod for the door.

The officer’s face went void of light at the same moment the transport stopped, not yet clear of the entrance. The hangar door began to lower.

Matt shouted curses behind them, Katie quick to join when Shiro thrust them forward, knocking her back in the seat. Behind them, the officer drew a gun, but it was harmless against the pod’s armor. Shiro tilted them to an angle to fit in the sliver between the transport and the door, wings reaching tall to the floor and ceiling as their exit became shorter and shorter.

She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the seat and squeezed her eyes shut, yelling “Shit!” when one wing scraped the floor and the pod jerked. Then her stomach lurched and they were gaining altitude, and Matt was cackling behind her.

Their ascent leveled out as they broke from the planet’s gravity. Katie found herself scooting forward in the seat again even before she had opened her eyes to see the stars.

But she opened her eyes to nothing but cold and distant pinpricks of light.

Minutes passed, until the planet was just another dot behind them, and then Shiro said, “I’m going to get us out of the system, to be safe, but then it’s up to you, Pidge.”

“Katie,” she said. Her own voice was distant as the stars but she could not conjure the energy to care.

“Sorry, Katie.”

She did not realize how awkward the air had become until Matt leaned forward between the two seats. “What can I do, Kit-Kat?”

Katie looked back to the different parts strewn on the floor around them. Idly, she picked up a bundle of blue wires and ran a hand over them, trying to feel their texture. “I don’t know. It’s pretty small, there’s not really enough room for two people to work on it.”

“Nonsense!” And then he pushed his way onto her seat. Katie squawked as she was forcefully shuffled to the side, having to brace her left foot against the wall of the ship so that she did not fall off of her tiny half of the seat. She shoved at his arm pressed up against her shoulder, though not hard enough to move him, and he responded by wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her even closer. “See, plenty of room for two!”

She leaned into him. “You’re going to suffocate me.”

“Absolutely tragic. So what can I do?”

She tensed, but forcibly relaxed before he could remove his arm. She plucked the tool from his belt. “I can do this.”

“I don’t doubt that,” he said, in a voice that was. . .wrong. Pitying. “Just thought it’d be nice to do it together.”

It would. Another time. She scrunched her shoulders in a shrug and then went to work. Matt, bless him, did not linger, but turned to Shiro, in a conversation that started with bragging on the pilot but devolved too fast for her to keep up while only half-listening. She broke in to ask Matt to grab parts from the floor that she could not reach, but otherwise, she was alone in her work.

She was not as happy as she had hoped she might be to be working on her own project, but she could lose herself in it enough that she did not have to think about that.

After one particular anecdote about Matt being banned from all forms of chemistry except baking, he squeezed the arm that was around Katie’s shoulder, pulling her up from her work. “I’m not as dangerous as Katie, though! At least I didn’t try to mutilate myself to become one with my computer.”

“She did what?!”

“I’ve told you this story before.” But when silence answered him, Katie had to lift her head to see Shiro’s bemusement. “This is—This is one of my favorite Katie stories, how have I not told it to you? You were even with me when it happened! Our first year at the Garrison! The cyborg incident!”

“I don’t remember anything about a cyborg.”

“Do you want to tell him?”          

Other than Green, she had yet to share it with anyone outside her family. Though that was more from a lack of audience than a lack of willingness to tell it. She freed her hands and inched forward in her seat so she could face Shiro around Matt. “I was six years old and came to the conclusion that humans just weren’t cutting it.” Shiro’s eyes widened, and she let whatever horror his imagination had come up with hang in the air for a tick. “If I was going to ascend, I needed to be more than human. I was going to turn myself into a cyborg. The ultimate goal was to assimilate my brain with my computer, but I decided to start small. I would replace my heart with a mechanical one I built.”

Shiro recoiled, even if he could not look away, and Katie found herself starting to smile at the corners. “I’ll spare you the gory details. Mom noticed the first aid kit was missing, thought I was trying to hide electrical burns again, and went to find me. So I didn’t die. I did have to have a number of emergency surgeries though.”

He snapped and pointed a finger at her, then looked to Matt. “We were in a group study session when your mom called and said your sister tried to gouge out her chest. You were completely unsurprised and that was the first time the rest of us realized your family is insane.”

“I’m slightly disappointed you didn’t realize that our first day as roommates.” Matt nudged Katie with his shoulder. “Tell ‘m what you did with the heart.”

She held back a snicker at Shiro’s look of anticipated horror. “As soon as I got out of the hospital, I hid the mechanical heart under my bed so my parents wouldn’t get rid of it. It wasn’t a good organ replacement, but it still beat like one. So that summer, we had our uncle and cousins, who are all between me and Matt in age, over. Right before they arrived, I hooked the heart up to a battery and hid it in the air vents.” She placed a hand on Matt’s knee and leaned over him to Shiro. “During the day, everyone was too rowdy to hear it, but after everyone quieted to sleep, and the only sound was the house settling, the constant, quiet pulse from nowhere slowly came into focus. Matt caught me when I was trying to put the heart in the vents, and like a responsible adult, he had our cousins read _The Telltale Heart_ before everyone went to sleep.”

Matt laughed sharply and muttered praise at his own genius. Shiro chuckled at them even as he shook his head. “Matt has told me that one. Are you two sure you aren’t of the Devil?”

Katie shrugged, smiling and wishing she was enjoying this. “What’s your hospitalization legend?”

“Uh…” Shiro faced forward as he thought, and Katie remembered the gladiator ring and _shit._ But his mind did not take him there, because he said, “I don’t think I ever hospitalized myself, or anyone, aside from your average training accident at the Garrison.”

“What about the time you concussed Keith?” Matt asked.

After a long, deep sigh, Shiro swung his legs to be between the seats so he could fully face Katie. “I was sixteen and my foster dad and I were heading to the Garrison for move in, myself driving. We were going to leave at five in the morning, so I asked Keith if he wanted me to wake him up and say goodbye before we left, but he wanted to say goodbye the night before instead. A little weird, but I figure, he’s a nine year old taking advantage of the last days of summer vacation to sleep in. The next morning, around ten o’clock, we’re on the interstate, going seventy-something an hour, and from the very back of the van Keith sits up. I jumped so badly I veered hard into the next lane. I didn’t hit anyone, but I whiplashed the still half-asleep Keith into the window and knocked him out cold.” He paused to Katie and Matt’s snickers. “I ended up getting to the Garrison near midnight because we had to take Keith to a hospital and then wait for our foster mom to come pick him up.”

“If it’s any consolation, Katie tried setting my suitcase on fire to keep me from going.”

“And I don’t regret it,” she stated flippantly **.** “Are there any other great stories I’ve been missing out on?”

Matt looked her over, then slowly faced Shiro with a rising grin. “Y’know, I think she’s old enough for us to tell her some of our Garrison-after-dark stories now.”

“How’s the Lion-tracker coming?” Shiro asked instead.

She stuck her tongue out, just to be sure he had no misconceptions of her future snoopiness. “Pretty much done. Just need to hook it up to the navigation system.” For this, she held the cords out to Matt. He accepted them and slid down between the seats to get below the console. As he worked, she propped her head on her chin and studied the device. The only part of interest to the common eye was the dual partial orbs on its top, as close to Allura’s controls for the Castle of Lions as Matt could find and she could make. Katie had done plenty of snooping with the Altean technology, though never before attempted to replicate the interface between life form and quintessence. She let a hand hover over the interface. Then it retreated to rub her chest – her heart felt weird.

She looked to Matt, who had poked his head from under the console, looking all worried at her again. She dropped her hand. “Are we ready?”

He nodded once. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“ ‘Course not,” she said, and stuck her hands on it before she could convince herself otherwise. Her eyes slid shut, as she had seen Allura’s do countless times, and in her mind’s eye sought the Green Lion. But she could not activate the device. And she knew why, knew that shortly into her imprisonment, the Druids had done something different, and the pain had been beyond physical or mental as green quintessence, _her_ quintessence, was torn away before her eyes, and she screamed and fought back in a way she would never be able to explain, and then Green was silent and they left her alone.

It had been maybe a week later when a Galra officer ran in, thinking she had escaped, because the Green Lion had broken free and flown away.

A hand squeezed her knee. “Katie?”

Shiro and Matt were staring at her with equal concern. Her mouth had tied; she couldn’t speak. Matt squeezed her knee again. But she did not want Matt, someone else kept her from the Druids, she wanted. . .

She pulled her leg away from Matt and pushed the device across the console to Shiro. He accepted it without question and placed his hands on the orbs **.** They glowed a soft purple, and the nav-system lit up. When she did not reach for it, Matt rose to his knees between the seats to access it himself. “Black Lion located. Recalibrating to target the lion energy.”

Green had to have a pilot. Why rescue her when they could find a new green paladin and just save the necessary part of Voltron?

Matt looked to her, and she wanted to smile, or say she was fine, but neither would cooperate, so she pulled her good leg onto the seat and hid her face in her knee and tried to breathe. A weight rested across her shoulders. Matt’s cloak. Without opening her eyes, she adjusted the cloak until she was cocooned in its weight and warmth and the smell of someone other than _him._

“Five lions located,” Matt announced moments later. “Or the directions they’re in at least. Looks like all of them are together except for one. That one also seems to be the closest.”

The ship hummed as Shiro spun them in its direction. “Then that’s where we’re headed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter length consistency who?
> 
> Come shitpost with me on [Tumblr!](https://amicuscordis.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

At once, Pidge was aware of a sharp cold pinching and burning her skin. She tensed reflexively, arresting her weak muscles from suspension and sending herself toppling forward. She didn’t particularly care about her inevitable acquaintance with the floor, nor was she particularly surprised when she instead fell into something firm but bony. At least it was warm. She curled into it, until she felt the light laugh that shook it. “Wow, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you cuddly. I’m honored!”

Pidge jerked away from Lance’s chest, earning a whine from him and a shiver from herself, and squinted through the fog. “What happened to your face?”

Lance gawked. “What is with you women getting out of cryopods? Nothing happened to my face!”

Dark bags hung below sunken red eyes, the beginnings of a few pimples threatened his normally flawless complexion, and his lips were pale and chapped **,** all under suspiciously uncombed hair. Pidge hugged herself through a shiver and pulled her mouth into a tight line. “You look like a vampire.”

Lance was unfazed as he swung his jacket off and onto her shoulders. “The hot kind I hope.”

Normally, she would consider the jacket patronizing, but the cryo lingered on her skin even through her armor’s undersuit and the jacket was pleasantly warm. She stuck her arms through the appropriate holes, though they were too short to actually make it out the sleeves, and hugged it tighter to herself. “Well you’re not sparkling.” Which was part of the problem. He normally had more life in those blue eyes. Her own eyes widened with realization, and she whipped her head around to take in the infirmary.

Lance rested a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it. “He’s okay, relax.”

She did, when she saw the other active cryopod, but her chest still squeezed and her fists tightened within the jacket sleeves. “How did we get out?”

“Keith carried you and Allura carried Hunk while I gave cover fire from above.”

“Did we get the prisoners out?”

Lance’s silence and the quick aversion of his eyes when she looked up to him answered her. Lips tugging down, she looked back to the cryopod, and amidst its fog saw her friend’s silhouette. It didn’t betray the three smoking holes that she recalled in his armor. Her throat dried, forcing her voice hoarse as she whispered, “Quiznak…”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Really? Cause how I remember it, Hunk went down saving my sorry ass and even then I couldn’t defend myself!”

“That wasn’t your fault either!” he said with enough force to make her jump. He took her shoulders, spinning her to face him, though she recoiled at the desperation written on his face. “I was above you guys and could see everything! The sentries were definitely targeting you. Hunk noticed it too. That’s why he got between you. It wasn’t your fault.”

The sentries targeting her made some sense: she was their breach into the Galra computer systems, and, as Shiro had taken great care to point out before the mission, the weakest in combat. “What does Keith say?”

Lance withdrew his hands from her shoulders at the mention of their supposed leader, what little energy he had fading from his tired eyes as he looked to Hunk. “He agrees with Shiro. But he’s just being a suck up again. He’s wrong. Shiro made it sound like you were worthless without your lion, but, but you’re not!” His hand fisted. “You’re incredible! You’re the brains of the team. You’ve saved our butts countless times. Without you, we wouldn’t have known where the prisoners were in the first place or gotten so far into the cruiser. If anyone else had been Green’s pilot, we would have been defeated ages ago – hell, defeated at the start, when we were still on Arus and they bombed the castle. I’d have died if you hadn’t taken on Sendak.”

Humility had never been a Holt trait: his words should have just been confirming everything she already knew. Yet hearing him made her feel lighter. Shiro’s chastisement really must have gotten to her. Damn him. But the forlornity remained in Lance’s empty gaze. When he noticed her scrutiny, he shriveled. “What?”

“Do you have to look so depressed when you say it?”

Lance held up his hands as if to surrender. “Depressed, me? No way! I’m thrilled for you, you do great, and I. . .” he trailed off, writhing under her accusing stare, before ultimately sighing and dropping his hands, digging them into his jeans’ pockets. “You’re great. You’re all great. And I just. . . the sentries couldn’t even see me from where I was, I didn’t have to worry about defending myself, and yet I didn’t take down enough of them to protect you and Hunk.”

Pidge toed at his shins, but was unsuccessful in making him look at her. “Did you forget that time on Arus you were just talking about when you came out of a coma to save me from Sendak? Or on this last mission when you covered all of our asses while we escaped, two of us unconscious? You’re our sharpshooter, remember?”

“I thought I was just a goofball and dumb,” he said dryly.

She stopped her attack on his legs. “Oh my god.” He flinched. “We were joking, Lance! We only said it because we didn’t mean it!”

He finally looked to her, face contorted and flustered **.** “How does that make any sense?!”

“You just open yourself up because you talk yourself up too much. That’s why we poke at you! It’s called _teasing_. For a guy with so many siblings I had thought you’d be familiar with the concept.” She paused. Lance didn’t say anything, though he might have been blushing. “You do plenty for the team too, and not just as a sharpshooter. With Shiro all weird, you’re Keith’s only impulse control, which at this point has saved our lives multiple times. Not to mention you’re the dork that relieves all of the tension that this goddamn war likes to put on all of us. I swear somedays I’d go insane if I didn’t get to laugh with you.”

He was definitely blushing, and looking at his feet in an attempt to hide it. His hands went to his hips, then one to his neck, then he rubbed his arms and still couldn’t find a comfortable place for them. “Thanks. . . Why are you being so nice?”

“You cheered me up. Returning the favor.”

Lance finally looked up, blush and all with a teeth-shining grin. “Well thanks for that.”

Pidge nodded once, then looked to Hunk’s cryopod. The time spent on ice had already healed the visible parts of his wounds, but his face still contorted in pain. “How long until he’s out?”

Lance’s footsteps followed her to the cryopod, stopping over her shoulder. “Another few vargas. I’m going to stay here until he is.”

Pidge nodded again, a silent agreement to stay. “Think Keith’s going to stop me from going next mission?”

“Only if you let him stop you.”

Pidge “hmph”ed. “I dunno, if Shiro says it’s not safe for me to go again, you can bet he’s going to agree. He used to not have a problem disagreeing with anyone.”

“It’s Shiro!” Lance declared, so suddenly and angrily in her ear that Pidge jumped. His face reddened when she looked over her shoulder to him with an eyebrow raised. “Sorry, it’s just… something’s up with him. Shiro made Keith the leader, but he constantly contradicts him, and tells us to go against what Keith says, and–and Keith’s confidence has obviously been completely shot and he just keeps doing it.”

She chewed her lip, contemplating keeping her own mutinous thoughts to herself, until she felt Lance stirring anxiously at her silence. “He also used to be supportive of me looking for my family, but when I told him a couple days ago about my lead on Matt, he told me that I wasn’t allowed to go out and search for him. _Too dangerous._ He refused to even go with me to find him, and this is _Matt._ His best friend outside of Keith, his—we called them the Pining Prodigies when they were in the Garrison. They went to quiznakking space together the first chance they got. And then he took Matt’s place in the arena. Shiro wouldn’t just give up on him.”

A tension melted from the room, leaving behind just her and Lance and the beginnings of his smile. “A’ight, so I’m not the only one who thinks this guy’s off. That’s nice to know.”

“What does Hunk think?”

“He. . .” Lance trailed off, holding the vowel, then glanced quickly between Hunk’s pod and the door. “Not supposed to be telling you this, since Hunk wasn’t supposed to tell me, but apparently Shiro told Hunk the other day that he hasn’t felt welcome since he got back.”

She flapped the end of the long sleeve at Hunk’s pod in lieu of waving a fist against him. “Curse you and your big heart! Guess we lost him then.”

“He just doesn’t want to stir up trouble.” She heard the proud smile in his next words. “But you have no problem with that.”

“I like to fly under the radar when I can. Have any kind of plan?”

“No plan yet. If we just confront Keith you know he’ll defend Shiro. We need to reignite that rebellious spark until standing up becomes his own idea.”

Pidge extended a hand, sleeve dangling limply off her arm. “I’ll support you on that.”

Too late did she notice the spark in his grin. After shaking the sleeve, he yanked her toward him, her back to his chest, and ignored her defiant squawk as he pulled the sleeves to wrap her arms around her like a straight-jacket. His own arms wound tightly around her, smothering her squirms. “Gak! Lance, let me go!”

He placed his chin on her head so that she could feel the laughter in his chest and throat. “Nope! I’ve been worrying about you for days and I need hugs to make up for it.”

With a huff, she slacked. At least he was warm. “You have a really bony chin.”

* * *

 The planet the solo lion was hidden on, while under Galra control, was only occupied by Galra or civilian in the tropical regions **.** The frozen ocean they tracked the lion to was desolate.

_“It’s not the weirdest hiding place,_ ” Shiro reasoned over the comm as he dragged his glowing bionic arm through the ice. _“Especially if it’s the Blue Lion.”_

Even before she had been taken from Voltron, they had been theorizing that cryo for organisms and hibernation for the lions blocked Druid magic, which was why Allura and the lions, particularly Black, had been untraceable for ten thousand years. But even if Druid tracking was a possibility for how they had been found a year before, “Allura wouldn’t just stop piloting and ditch.”

Though she watched him from the safety of the pod with her cloak wrapped warm around her, Katie still shivered when Shiro pushed away the block he had cut in the ice and dove into the water. His paladin armor was meant to protect him even in the vacuum of space, but for the moment, the water looked more threatening. A film of ice immediately set over the hole Shiro had made, sealing him under.   _“Maybe she took up Green?”_

Katie bristled. “No way. They wouldn’t work well together at all.” Allura was all business and no adventure. Though she had no idea of who else could have taken the green paladin mantle. Even Coran would be a stretch.

Shiro did not respond, long enough that Matt asked, “See anything down there?” He leaned over the console to better see where Shiro had disappeared. Though wrapped similarly to Katie in Shiro’s chair, a thin sheet of frost had speckled his hair white in the few moments Shiro had opened the hatch to exit.

_“Nothing yet_. _Not even any fish or anything. I’m not sure if that’s because nothing lives here or if a kraken got to them first.”_

“How well would you be able to fight a kraken?”

_“I wouldn’t.”_

Katie thrummed her fingers against her crossed arms. “Are you _intending_ to die?”

He laughed, but it was too dry, too forced. _“Have a few more things to do before I can do that.”_

No one said anything for several minutes as Shiro continued to descend, propelled into the ocean by the jets on his armor. The only sound was the pod creaking under the harsh wind. Matt occasionally would tap at the console to assure no Galra had neared them. Katie reckoned she spaced out for much of the time until Shiro said, _“I see it! The particle barrier!”_

Matt leaned forward to see outside again, as if he could somehow look down through the ice. Shiro’s breaths came audibly through the comm. _“Okay, I’m at the barrier and I can see the Blue Lion inside of it.”_

“How do you get past the barrier?” Matt asked.

_“I don’t know. I mean. . . I guess I could just tou—whoa!”_

Staticky, whirling noises. Shiro yelled again. Something growled. Katie pulled her good foot under her to crouch in the chair as she too leaned over the console to peer at the ice. “Shiro!” Matt yelled at the comm. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

The surface a hundred feet away erupted, shaking the ice, the pod, knocking Matt into the wall and Katie into Matt’s seat. Hail tormented the window above them. Matt pushed Katie upright to rise himself, frantically searching through the sheet of white. “Shiro?!”

The hail stopped. As one, Matt and Katie pushed open the hatch, but he pushed her shoulder back as he leapt into the biting cold. “Stay!”

“Fat chance!” she yelled at the wind, snatching up her staff and jumping out after him. Upon landing, hot pain jolted her right leg, which gave under her. She writhed on the ice, instinctively grabbing at her leg. Shit, shit, maybe Matt hadn’t just been being overprotective. She fought to keep her breathing controlled, lungs aching with the frozen air. Numb fingers rolled up her pants leg to see the bandages underneath. Still white. The stitches had not ripped this time.

She wrapped her exposed fingers in the cloak, then clung to the metal staff to hoist herself back to her feet, wary of her useless leg. “Matt! Shiro!” she called into the white limbo. The blizzard had thickened, blocking all from sight save the pod next to her. But then she found the beacon, the bright yellow glow of the lion’s eyes. She followed the eyes, teetering under the wind that threatened to snatch her off her feet.

By the time she climbed the ramp up Blue’s jaw, the cold had numbed the pain in her leg, as well as all other feeling save the sharp sting on her exposed skin. The inside of Blue was warmer only on account of the lack of wind. Katie hugged herself, clenched her jaw against teeth chattering a violent tune. The cockpit’s antechamber was swamped in fog. Droplets plagued the wall from a sheet of ice melting by Blue’s awakening. Katie shuffled across the frosted floor until she was in the door of the cockpit, watching a silhouette rise from the pilot’s seat, a hand to its head. “Allura?”

The silhouette spun, then stiffened straight. “Pidge!” The princess darted around the chair, regality undermined by groggy movements until her arms had latched around Katie’s shoulders. “You’re okay!”

She let Allura hug her. “It’s Katie now.”

Allura pulled away, but kept her hands on Katie’s shoulders. Her eyes shifted to the junction of Katie’s neck and shoulder. Her muscles locked, leaving her unable to stop Allura from carding her fingers through the ends of Katie’s stringy hair, once an ensemble of short fluffs, now thick waves to her shoulders. “How long have I been gone?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Shiro said behind Katie. She craned her neck to see him and Matt in the door to the cockpit, coated in frost but uninjured. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

Allura’s hand tensed on Katie’s shoulder. She looked back to find the princess’s lips pulled into a thin line. “It is not a difficult question, Shiro. How long ago did Lotor destroy the Castle of Lions?”

“Destroy it?”

At his alarm, Allura’s gaze hardened, something dangerous curling on her tongue, until Katie said, “There’s two Shiro’s running around. This one—”

“The original one,” Matt added.

“—teleported out of the Black Lion to Matt when we took on Zarkon—who is alive, if you didn’t know—and then there’s the other one that escaped from the Galra shortly after and is presumably still with Voltron. What happened to the castle?”

Her brow knitted at the information, suspicion threatening to turn somber. Then she straightened, shoulders back and arms firmly held at her side, as if tears were not in her eyes. “The Galra were too many and too sudden for everyone to get to their lions in time. We had only just made it by the time they had taken down the Green Lion, and without Voltron, we could not stop them.” Katie suddenly felt lightheaded, but Allura pressed on, watching Matt and Shiro as she spoke. “Lance took Coran, Shiro, and the mice before the fire could reach the bridge. The engines were destroyed, but the teludav was still functioning, so I had the Blue Lion freeze the bridge and then opened a wormhole. The others managed to get through before any cruisers could follow them, just some pods and the comet ship, but the wormhole closed before I could make it through. The Galra chased me to this planet. The ice sealed immediately after I crashed, so I don’t think the Galra knew I was below it. They continued to search the surface, though, and I could not get a message to the others without risk of interception. Since we did not know how they were tracking us, Blue offered to put me in cryo and to hibernate in case it was through us. So, I ask again, how long have I been gone?”

“It’s been a little over a decaphoeb, princess,” Shiro stated as he came to stand beside Katie, his hand resting on her tense shoulder.

Allura did not looked surprised, but loosened her own shoulders in resignation, eyes darting to the side. “Where are the others?”

“We’re looking for them. Matt and I didn’t know anything was wrong until our rebel group broke Katie out a few days ago.”

That did earn a look of surprise, and then Allura swept to the front of the cockpit. “If there are no Galra around to intercept us, I can try to contact them.”

“Talk to Lance,” Katie said, “and make sure he’s alone. He was the only other one suspicious of the other Shiro. I bet if I connect my Lion-tracker to Blue’s navigation system we can also get an exact location for them.”

Before she could move, Shiro declared he would retrieve it, and then disappeared, his hand on her shoulder replaced by Matt’s. Allura was in the process of calling Lance, so Katie settled on the floor and began to feel along the wall with her fingertips. Matt sat beside her. “How’s your leg holding up?”

At last, she found the point she wanted, and with a little push and tug, the panel popped out of place for her to set aside. Then with both hands she held up her right leg, warmth returning and with it the deep ache, and dropped it in Matt’s lap. “It’s holding.”

He pushed up her pants’ leg to investigate himself. As he did, she peered into the panel. The tech was only vaguely Altean, and not for the first time she wondered how much of the design for Voltron could be credited to King Alfor and how much to the ship itself. When she ran her fingers along the viscera, however, tiny blue symbols lit up across it. Matt leaned in next to her. “Is that Altean writing?”

“Yes. Give me.”

He looked to her hand outstretched for the tool hanging at his belt, then unclipped it and dropped it in her hand. “Beautiful script. Do you need. . .?”

His eyes flit to Allura. Katie twirled the tool in her hands and shook her head. “I can read it.”

“You can read Altean?” he asked. Turning back to the ship’s guts to find the right wires to disconnect for her tracker, she nodded. “Did Allura teach you?”

“I taught myself. Nearly died but I did it.”

“You, Miss I’ll-Only-Learn-Latin-Insults-And-Nothing-Else-Unless-My-Brother-Ties-Me-To-A-Chair-And-Bribes-Me-With-Peanut-Butter, taught herself a language?”

She prodded him in the side with the tool, earning a squeak. “I learn the useful parts of languages. So how many space languages do you speak now?”

A gust of cold air shrouded them as Blue’s entrance below them opened once more. “Fluently, just two, but I can read Galra and hold a conversation in at least six others.”

“And you don’t have better things to do with your time in a war?”

“I was Chief Officer of Communications for the Velurian Freedom Fighters, thank you very much. I needed to be able to dialogue with all of our agents.”

“They all speak Basic,” Shiro announced as he sat next to Katie, on the other side from Matt. “He just likes to look impressive.”

Matt, maturely, stuck his tongue out at Shiro, who ignored him to place the scanner in Katie’s lap. She began to hook it up, ignoring the twist in her gut. Chief Officer of Communications probably had plenty of duties when they brought a newly freed planet into their alliance, like they just had with Kaline. But he had to bail her out instead.

“Lance! Lance, can you hear me?”

_“Allura?”_

Katie bristled at his voice and hastened to connect tracker and lion before Shiro and Matt could notice. But still her chest tightened with an anxiety she had not felt in over a year, of having to talk to a best friend who had conspicuously developed feelings for her, of wondering if their entire friendship was pretense, of knowing that someday he would learn she did not reciprocate and never would, and that he might try to fix her or leave her (too late for that)—

“Lance, are you alone?” Allura asked. A pause as he silently answered. “Is everyone alright? Where are you?”

_“We’re all fine! I… I can’t tell you where we are, because, reasons. But I’m really glad you’re okay. What happened?”_

“The Galra trapped me beneath ice. What do you mean you can’t tell me where you are?”

_“It’s… been a weird few months.”_

A holoscreen came on just above Katie’s head. She tilted her head back to read it. “They’re on Olkarion.”

_“Pidge?!”_

She leaned back into the screen’s view as Allura stepped aside for the two to see each other. As she was practically back from the dead, she expected him to look as he had when she first told him she was actually a girl, with jaw-dropped and eyes huge. And he did look surprised, except it was more. . . sad. She did not know what to make of that. At least he didn’t look love-struck. One crisis averted. “Katie now. And you’re on Olkarion, or at least orbiting it.” Then she hunched over the Lion-tracker to escape his view.

“We’re coming to Olkarion,” Allura declared. “And you won’t tell the others that we are coming until we get there.”

He hesitated to answer. _“Okay. But before you see us, you need to see Ryner. You’ll understand after you do.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Come shitpost with me on [Tumblr!](https://amicuscordis.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

Her mother had once remarked that Pidge could impressively remain a private person while always letting people know exactly how she felt. Pidge liked her secrets, but feelings had no filter, and panic attacks had no conception of bad timing. Then again, all timing was bad timing, because someone could always see her. Her audience did not have to know that the thought of sucking face with their Prince was the cause of most of her attacks. They could not tell a Lotor-inspired attack from one leftover from battles as a paladin or time with the Druids. Thanks, PTSD?

Pidge’s hands were shaking, too hard to type on the tablet, even if she had been able to see the screen well, but she didn’t need to, just one more tap and then the robot dog’s eyes lit up. Before she could unplug her tablet and close the hatch on its back, the dog forced himself under her arms and nuzzled her face. Just like the Bae Bae on Earth always would. Ro-Bae was not warm like her Bae Bae, and he lacked a tongue, but she did not have any tears for him to lick away. The last time she had cried had been forty-six quintants ago, the day before she was separated from her team, when her family’s absence became a physical ache that left her sobbing in Green’s cockpit. Tomorrow, it would be forty-seven quintants. She could get to forty-seven. She needed to get to forty-seven. And with the continued insistence of a dog nose in her face, she was able to take many deep, shaky breaths, and finally steady.

The door opened. Pidge’s arm tightened around Bae Bae as the panic she had finally managed to repress threatened to rise again, but Bae Bae slipped out of her arms to stand aside, just as she had programmed him to do in the presence of others, so he could not risk being taken for getting in Lotor’s way, but she wanted him back, and for the newcomers to _go away—_

“Katie?”

Pidge almost spat her chosen name at the hoarse voice, because they weren’t allowed to touch her real one dammit. But when she looked up to do so, the name died in her throat, and she flew across the room, dropping her tablet and stumbling in her rush to rise, into the arms of Samuel Holt.

He couldn’t catch her. He stumbled back, only staying upright by Galra hands on his shoulders. But she didn’t care about them, because her arms were around him and his around her, but he was too thin, and cold, and shaking. She looked up to his face, to eyes that once held a glint, of wisdom from having seen the entire earth, of excitement at knowing the rest of the universe still awaited. But that glint was gone. He took her shoulders, fingers skeletal but grip strong from whatever work camp he had been trapped in. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

_And you are?_ she wanted to say, but laughter was all that came out, laughter in spite of his worried eyes, his shaking head, his holding tight to her shoulders as she tried to hold onto him. All that quelled her hysteria was the familiar prince over her father’s shoulder, flanked by sentries **.** But then Lotor stepped away. The door closed. She and Sam were alone.

He squeezed her shoulders, pulling her attention back to him, and she noticed how his grey hair had thinned to greasy wisps stuck to his head. “Why aren’t you on Earth?”

His voice was weaker too. She felt her own throat dry at the sound. Pidge – no, Katie, she was Katie with him. Katie put her hands over the wrinkled ones on her shoulders. “I was exploring the universe. Like you said.” Her hand stayed on his as he moved it up to hold her cheek, and there she saw it, when his wrist turned in, the precise scars on his inner arm.  Her hand tightened over his as she memorized the Galra characters, every curve and stroke of the number branded onto his skin. “I’ll fucking kill them.”

He said nothing. When she looked up, tears had streaked trails down his grimy face. After another failed attempt to speak, he pulled her to him, held her close and tight around her shoulders with a hand on the back of her head. “I’m so, so sorry, Katie.”

* * *

The Olkari only needed a tissue sample from each of them, and then they were left to their whims. For Katie, that meant showering, because she felt like the spawn of hell and probably smelled like it too. When the days-old ash and grime had been washed away, she was back in the resistance uniform, though she rolled up the right pants’ leg and left her boots off until she could rewrap her wound. Matt had already stuck her with more painkiller before they landed, so the laceration’s throb was dull as she limped by aid of her staff into the sitting room. Only Shiro was there, gaze emptily fixed on the wall, Matt’s medical bag rested on his lap. “Matt and Allura hitting up the city?”

He started, then stood, taking the bag in his hands. “Yeah. He loves learning about intergalactic cultures and she loves sharing her knowledge of them.”

She reckoned Matt only went with the assurance that Shiro was staying behind with her, though she could not see how Matt could envision that not turning out awkwardly. She sat in one of the chairs and propped her leg up on a short table, then reached for the bag when it looked like Shiro was going to sit beside her. An icebreaker wasn’t worth her autonomy; she wanted to take care of _herself,_ dammit. She reconsidered for only a moment when the bag was on her thighs and she looked clearly at her leg for the first time. The gash was long, uneven, the stitches lost in places among the dark and pale discoloration. Her stomach turned, but she only reconsidered her neglect of Shiro’s help for a tick before she was scouring the bag for disinfectant.

Shiro took his own seat again to watch her. “Results came back. They said that we all correspond to our respective given ages. I think that means they know about the impostor.”

So the team’s lack of search for her could not just be because the impostor was stopping them. A hope she did not even realize she had until it was gone. She poured the disinfectant on a rag and dabbed it onto her leg. “So I don’t have to kick ass with a dead leg. That’s nice.”

For several ticks, he watched her wrap gauze around the wound, and Katie tried not to tense at the anxious silence. Not even the fake Shiro had ever given off such an air of anxiety, but in his own, shaky way, maintained an aura of immovability. Not counting the impostor, she had known two Shiros: Garrison Shiro, roommate, best friend, and long-standing crush of her brother, who first inspired her to be a pilot and who saw her as a pseudo-sibling as much as she saw him as a hero; then Black Paladin Shiro, who finally saw her as a competent adult and fellow teammate, though at the cost of their familiarity.

Perhaps it was fairer to say he was one Shiro who knew a Katie and a Pidge, and at the moment was unsure which he was dealing with. To be fair, she was not sure who he was dealing with either.

The fact that she had yelled at him and tried to flee from him into a burning building after not seeing him for over a decaphoeb did not help. “Hey, I’m sorry for how I reacted when you were rescuing me.” She could not quite bring herself to say thanks, so she hoped it sounded implied. “I thought you were the other one.”

“I understand. From the sound of him, I would have done the same.” He scooted to the edge of the seat and clasped his hands together with his arms braced on his legs. “I’d like to be prepared going in, if you wouldn’t mind telling me about the ‘bastard with the bad haircut,’ and how he was, with you, and the others, and. . . Keith.”

Anyone with Shiro’s face had the most damage to do to Keith. Which also meant that topic was a minefield, and real Shiro may have been one of the most patient people she had ever met, but the thought of upsetting him made her chest constrict and her breath tighten.

Her leg was wrapped. Katie began to pack the medical bag. “He’s from the Galra, don’t know if he was sent or escaped like he claims. He has your memories, though he also has your cyber arm so they could have given him your memories that way. Maybe a shape shifter or a clone?” She darted her eyes up to him, to find a thoughtful frown, but no anger or comment. She set her sights back on packing. “Anyway, he showed up a few weeks after you disappeared. The Black Lion rejected him, but he kept the leader role anyway. He. . . wasn’t you in all the little ways. Like he told me I couldn’t go looking for Matt, and he would talk over us and lowkey encourage Allura to do the same, and he told Lance that once he got control of the Black Lion again Keith would be in Red and that would be it, and he told Hunk he didn’t feel welcome so that Hunk would shut down any complaining about him, and. . .”

The kit was packed, nothing else to keep her hands busy, and Shiro was watching her. Her left leg fidgeted as she fisted her hands around the kit’s handles. “And he kept trying to force Keith into leadership roles he didn’t want and then getting mad at him when he didn’t do it exactly how the bastard wanted it, and. . . just really screwed with Keith’s head.”

His hands only squeezed together. She did not think she flinched, but he quickly unclasped them anyway. “Thank you for telling me.” He stood. “Well, now that we have clearance and you’re all patched up, want to hunt down Matt and Allura with me?”

“Can’t you just contact Allura through the paladin armor?”

“Not as fun as seeing the great Olkari city.”

He smiled as he said it, a smile with all that anxiety gone. While she still was unsure who he thought she was, she knew that this was for her. If he was putting off getting back to Keith, he had to be pretty damn worried for her, and it made her stomach drop with dread. “I think that’s a bad idea. Probably shouldn’t walk more than I have to with this leg.”

She did not mean to sound dejected, but it was obvious in the way Shiro’s smile turned sad. He pulled up a screen over his gauntlet to message Allura. “Okay. We can meet them at the Blue Lion.”

Katie rolled down her pants over the bandage. “Cool. Are you and Matt dating yet?”

Shiro faltered, off guard, but recovered after a brief stutter. “Dating as in actively going on dates, not often, since there hasn’t been much time, but, we’re together, if that’s what you mean.”

She dropped her boots on the table in front of her to stick them on. “About fucking time.”

They beat Matt and Allura out to where the Blue Lion was parked, so Katie sat and leaned against a front paw to rest her leg, while Shiro stood beside her, both looking out into the city for the rest of their makeshift team. A breeze slipped across her face. She hardly felt it, as if its touch was on someone else’s skin, and she began to rub the coarse fabric of her cape between her fingers. Focus on that, and not the planet that once inspired a thousand curiosities, questions that went unanswered, because no matter how hard she wanted, she no longer cared about those answers.

“I don’t feel connected to anything anymore.” The thought had been in her head so long she almost did not notice when it was spoken. The rest came just as unwitting. “Olkarion is the first place where I felt connected to everything, to tech, to flora, hell even to the stars, like it all was one. But now, even when I’m back, there’s just. . . nothing.”

Shiro did not respond immediately, which sent a spike of fear in her chest. But then he sat next to her and draped his arms over his bent knees. “I felt pretty disconnected too when I first got back out into the universe. So did Matt. It’s not uncommon, but the good news is it gets weaker over time. The Green Lion helped you connect to everything before, right? Being separated for so long probably hasn’t helped, but I bet it’ll get easier once you two connect again.”

And she hoped he was right, because if this was how it was going to be, she was not sure she wanted to be away much longer, away from where her father was safe, away from where everything was in place, away from him.

She didn’t like that thought and chewed at the side of her index finger until Matt and Allura showed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katie only told Matt that Lotor knew where their dad was, excluding the fact that she had seen him herself... wink wink, nudge nudge, next chapter is nasty and here is your warning. It will also be the end of Act 1! Acts 2 and 3 are going to be their own separate story, Insatiability. I wrote the last two acts after Season 4 and their genre is a little different from this one (more whump and Katie kicking ass). I'll publish the first chapter of that at the same time as the last chapter of this act so be looking for that.
> 
> Any ideas who the new Green Paladin is? Made my beta screech. Speaking of, thanks to my QPP for beta-reading, and thanks to you for reading! I wish you a magical day!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by Miracle Productions: If you finish reading it, it'll be a miracle. That's not self-deprecating humor, it just took me this long to edit it because I kept gagging. Warning for gross descriptions of dubcon kissing and implied worse in the first scene.

The door opened. Katie’s stomach twisted, not ready to see the truth of why they brought him. Dad looked, though, and tightened his grip on her hands.

“I’m afraid that is all the time we have,” Lotor said. Her chest squeezed. They were just going to take him again? It could only have been a varga of them talking, about innocuous memories, about cosmic dust, about anything that was not work camps or the Garrison or Matt or Voltron. Her father looked back to her, gave her only a moment to see the water in his eyes before he pulled her in. She could see over his shoulder to Lotor, who watched, expressionless. She hid her eyes in her father’s shirt and returned his embrace.

He tilted his head down, resting it against hers to whisper, “Please get out of here.”

Someone was always listening. “Please be safe.”

They dwelled as long as they felt they could. Then her father kissed her forehead and stood. “I love you.”

“Love” had never been a weighted word in their home. It was said no differently than “Goodbye” or “Goodnight.” They did not need to make a ceremony of saying it because they always knew they had each other’s love. “I’m proud of you,” was the phrase that meant something. There was always warmth when it was said.

And an ache when it wasn’t. “I love you too.”

Katie followed him to the door, to watch Narti and two sentries escort him down the hall. As they disappeared around the corner, Lotor’s hand snaked onto her shoulder, arm cradling her back. “Thanks for letting me see him,” she said, because he would want to hear it.

“I am honored to provide that time for you, though regret it needed be so brief.” A pressure on her shoulder. Katie peeled her eyes from the bend and followed Lotor’s guide back into the room. The door closed. Then suddenly Pidge was standing on the bed and his lips were on hers, and she almost did not care, did not have to fight down a gag. She could let his slimy tongue infest her mouth and feel nothing for it, because her thoughts were following the prisoner walking further and further away, back to a work camp or worse.

By Lotor’s tactile behavior, the game was still going, but the timing was too random, the setup too paltry to be a ploy for her favor. If he wanted her to appreciate the visit, he would let her father stay for a substantial time, but instead he took him away again, to where he could be controlled, and the further he went away the more her panic began to rise. It had to be a threat. He had lost patience with the game. She had a high pain tolerance: she could withstand interrogation when she was the only one hurting. But when he could hurt Dad. . .

He withdrew from the kiss, but kept his forehead to hers and brushed at a strand of hair too short to stay behind her ear. “You’re distracted.”

She stepped back, until his hand dropped from her face and she could see clearly up into the blue irises on yellow sclera. “Why did you bring my dad here?”

“I thought you would like seeing him. If you would like, I can ensure his wellbeing.” She must have tensed, or scowled, because his smile faded and he raised his eyebrows. “You do not approve?”

Voltron was not coming. She could not attempt an escape while he had her father. They were trapped. Prolonging the game would just give time for her trepidation to grow, and nothing kills the chances of winning a fight more than fear. “What do you want?” she asked, voice low against a threatening tremble.

“A smile would be pleasant.” He brushed a thumb at her lips—she lurched back, leaving his hand stalled in the air and a halted, hurt look on his face. “You’re frightened of me.”

Instinct tugged her toward him, to stop that hurt look before it could turn to something worse, but she held his eyes. She had to act right then, while she had control, and she could tell the truth with just enough lie to fatally mislead him. “What do you want to know about Voltron?”

His face fell to something that might have been disbelief. Then his lips pulled into a tight smile, dripping acid. “There are those who would be eager to discuss Voltron with you, if that is all this has been to you.”

That was wrong. He couldn’t be sending her away. She was placing information in the palm of his hand, information the Druids could not get out of her, that he had tried to win her to get, that he was holding her father over her head for—unless she had grossly misinterpreted the entire situation, and suddenly she was lightheaded and was going to retch. The game was supposed to be a joke, a desperate attempt to keep her spirits, to cope until she could get the hell out of there. She wasn’t supposed to actually win.

He wasn’t supposed to actually fall in love with her.

And she fucked up. Shit, shit, she fucked up.

Convince him she reciprocated, she and Dad would be safe. Fail, and, don’t think about that.

But she had no idea what he wanted to hear. And even if she did, she could not say it believably. She had not a single cell capable of romance or whatever was in his mind.

She couldn’t do this.

For Dad.

That dangerous smile was fading to something hurt. He was about to walk away. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not,” she said. Tell a lie through the truth. Force him to make the deciding move.

“About what?”

“Everything. I have a long history of getting burned by shitty people and I honestly can’t tell when anyone actually cares anymore.”

“If you do not believe in my sincerity, what do you consider your participation in this?”

“Really hoping that you’re different.”

He studied her. Unconvinced. If she kept trying to talk, she would just get caught in a lie she could not sell or say something that would make it worse. _To protect Dad, to protect Dad, to protect Dad._ Pidge kissed him, aggressive and quick and everything that could hide from him how hard she was shaking and keep her too occupied to gag.

Yet she felt his hesitance, an absence of fervor as he went through the mere motions of kissing her, because they had done this before. Not even shoving tongues through speech cavities was anything new. He still doubted her, and she went cold at once with the realization of how far she might have to go to convince him. Surely he would not take a lie that far—but until he pushed her away, she could not doubt him. But sex wasn’t supposed to be _real_ , just something she snickered about with Lance because it made them feel like immature teenagers and not soldiers in an intergalactic war, and how did she get here, with her father’s safety hanging on how well she could convince this prince how much she loved him? She was supposed to be on Earth with her parents and Matt, blankets over their shoulders as they huddled around a telescope, stars and planets and aliens all distant and exciting and fun.

He started to draw away—he could tell she was distracted. No spacing out, no mental distancing allowed. She had to convince him. Her hand on the back of his neck pulled him back. At once his demeanor shifted, hesitation replaced with desperation as his acidic hands trailed down her sides. She let him explore, not daring to resist, but matched with feigned enthusiasm and prayed he would be satisfied before it could get any further. _Make him happy, make him happy._

Only when her back was on the mattress did she know that she was never going to leave. But the realization did not hurt as much as it should have. Maybe she had known for a long time. Matt was safe with the rebels. Her mother was still on Earth. With this, her dad would be okay, too.

_This isn’t that bad. This isn’t that bad._

* * *

 Katie, Matt, and Shiro crowded the pilot’s chair as Allura guided the Blue Lion to the moon’s crater the Olkari had directed her to. As they neared it, the floor of the crater retracted, beneath it a hazy green bubble protecting the synthetic atmosphere. They passed into it, Blue trembling lightly at the sudden shift in gravity. Beneath the bubble, they entered a tunnel that shortly opened into a brightly lit cave. The cave grew in their sights as they neared it, first to show three lions: Black, Red, and, in the back, Green. Silent in Katie’s head. Maybe not there at all. A tunnel between Black and Red lead further into the moon, only tall enough for people to walk through. As Blue settled next to the other lions, quaking the cave, they saw, perched on Red’s front paw in his baseball tee, Lance, shoulders hunched inward and hands thrust in his jeans’ pockets. He maintained this posture as he hopped off the paw and walked to stand before Blue.

“Where’s the Yellow Lion?” Shiro asked.

Allura released the controls, and as she stood slipped off her helmet to prop it under her arm. “We’ll find out. We need to talk to Lance to understand the situation before anyone else learns we’re here.”

She lead the way to the ramp, Matt on her heels. “And then we finally get to meet the doppelgänger. Ready for that, Shiro?”

“Not really. But I’m ready to see everyone else.”

Katie followed in the back, last to step off the ramp. Lance kept his eyes on Allura, too firmly, and Katie tried to be unbiased but he certainly seemed to be avoiding looking at _her_. He smiled softly, sadly. “Hey, guys. Welcome back. Except you, Matt.” He jerked upright.  “I mean, not that you’re not welcome, just that you’re not welcome _back_. Nice meeting you.”

“Lance!” a voice called from the tunnel. “What was—?”

Keith stopped abruptly at the mouth of the tunnel, color falling from his face as he stared at the newcomers. Then he snatched his bayard off his hip and materialized his sword.

Allura, Matt, and Katie reached for their weapons. Shiro was still. Lance jumped between all of them before they could take a step, flailing his arms at Keith. “Whoa, whoa, hold up! It’s the real them, Keith!”

“Don’t fuck with me!”

“I’m not!” Lance gestured to the crew behind him. “I had the Olkari test them! It’s the real them!”

Keith shook, eyes narrowed at the four behind Lance, but before he could act, Katie’s voice shouted, “What are we all yelling about!” And she had gotten so accustomed to being disconnected with herself, she didn’t question her voice, not until she saw the other girl, the one with short hair and Matt’s glasses and swamped by Lance’s jacket. That girl stopped in the mouth of the tunnel, next to Keith, but instead of grabbing the green bayard stuck to her hip, she let out a choked “Matt!” and took the first steps of a run to him. But then she saw Katie take a step closer to Matt and dug her feet into the ground to stop herself, teetering from the momentum.

“Lance, explain,” Keith said, voice low and shaking through his gritted teeth.

Lance waved his hand downward in a placating motion. “I am! They wouldn’t let me tell you guys they were coming.”

Shiro stepped forward, though stopped when Keith tensed. “You know where the other me came from, then?”

“He’s a clone,” the other her said, quietly, as if unsure if she were allowed.

Lance glanced to her, then started to look to Katie, but caught himself, instead focusing on the ground as he strode to be with the two at the tunnel. “We’ve been running into a lot of those lately. Well, two. So I wanted to make sure it was really you guys before I let you come here.”

It made sense, when Katie thought about it, because Green wouldn’t just accept anyone as a new pilot, and she sure as hell remembered the Druids extracting her quintessence. It made sense, yet she had to cross her arms and stare at the ground so no one could see her fight the stinging in her eyes.

“What happened to the clone then? And where’s Coran?” Allura demanded.

“Coran and Hunk are out collecting scaultrite for the new Castle of Lions the Olkari are making for us. The other Shiro is hidden nearby. Once Pidge—” Katie flinched, looked up “—figured out they were clones, we also realized the Galra were tracking us through his arm. We had to put him in cryo.”

“Green actually figured it out,” the other— Pidge, interjected. Her eyes flit between Matt and Katie, then to everywhere that wasn’t them. “Or figured out I was, at least. A couple movements after I rejoined the group, she threw me while I was on top of her. Since we didn’t have a healing pod, we came to the Olkari for help. Turns out the cloning process isn’t perfect. They gave me her memories, used her DNA to give me the same basic appearance, touched it up with birthmarks and outer scars, even gave me some of her quintessence.”

“But not the internal scarring from the mechanical heart transplant,” Katie finished.

“From the what?!”

Pidge grinned at Allura, wide and shit-eating and making Katie’s own cheek muscles ache. “Mechanical heart transplant! I. . . or, she,” she gestured to Katie, “tried to replace her heart with a bionic one when she was six **.** Tried, didn’t succeed. But she has a ton of scars that I don’t have.”

The clone stopped, suddenly aware of Katie’s glare. She stumbled over her words for a tick, then cleared her throat. “I noticed in their scans I didn’t have any of that, so I got the Olkari to test me to see how old I was. Just a few weeks. Pretty easy to figure out from there that the Galra just let me think I escaped on my own. So we tested the other Shiro without him realizing, and he was only a few phoebs old. We figured his Galra arm was how they always seemed to know where we were, so without him realizing we put him under, since cryo can block the Druids. They haven’t found us since.  We would have just taken the arm off, but we weren’t sure if tampering would just weaponize it, so we’ve been waiting for a way to get rid of the Druid influence before we remove it and wake him up.”

“I can figure out a way to do that,” Katie said.

“Already on it. We were planning to use Allura’s Altean energy like she used to destroy the komar. Now that she’s here we should be able to wake him up within a couple days.”

Lance draped an arm over her head and leaned, forcing her to hunch. “They didn’t give her any cool bionic developments, meaning they can’t be remotely tracking or influencing her, so no need to put her under. Although since we doubt they just sent us another paladin and the Green Lion again for the hell of it, we’re assuming that she’s an unwitting sleeper agent **.** They just say the word and she can access her ingrained killer skills to wipe out the team. Which is why I am officially her guard!”

Pidge batted at the arm on her head. “You just like pretending you can take me.”

In answer, Lance swept his arms around her legs and tossed her over his shoulder. Pidge squawked in protest. “Dammit, Lance!”

He spun in place, cackling. “Seems like I can take you just fine!”

“I’ll tase you.”

He squeaked and promptly set her to her feet in front of him, not releasing her, but instead wrapping his arms around her shoulders and standing against her back. He kissed the top of her head before resting his bony chin there. Pidge didn’t fight him off, though she swatted him when he poked her in the side.

Then they noticed Katie, and the smiles left their faces, movements becoming stiff. Katie quickly looked away, to find she had been the only one still watching. Shiro had taken cautious steps to Keith, as if he were to bolt at a sudden movement, which, from Keith’s skeptical expression, was possible, but he stayed to speak in low tones with Shiro. The mice had crowded Allura’s feet. She knelt to offer them her hands while Matt watched over her shoulder.

Alone, then. Katie stepped back, away from the group. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered to no one.

The inside of the Green Lion was quiet. It had always been peaceful, but never quiet, because even when she would hide in Green for silence from her teammates and battles, there had always been the feline’s whisper.

The screen was off when the cockpit doors parted. Through the tinted window, she could see the others: Pidge and Lance still had arms around each other, though by their expressions the conversation had turned somber; Keith and Shiro slowly drew nearer to each other, until Shiro put a tentative hand on Keith’s shoulder, and Keith looked like he might run but instead put a hand over Shiro’s; Allura was still rapt in her conversation with the mice, but Matt paced in a small circle as he searched the cave with his eyes. Possibly for her.

Katie drew a hand across the pilot’s chair, the place she once felt connected to everything. Hesitantly, she sat. Her hands hovered above the controls. Curled in the air. She wiped her sweaty palms on her legs, then grabbed the handles. “Hey, girl. It’s me.”

Nothing. She was connected to nothing. Her hands tightened. “I’m still me,” she croaked. “You know me.”

_“The Green Lion has an inquisitive personality and needs a pilot of intellect and daring.”_

Her jaw trembled under shaky breaths. “I want to be. I want to be.”

Katie choked on a sob and begged for the comforting purr. Green didn’t respond. She squeezed her eyes shut. She could not cry. It had been three hundred thirty quintants since she last cried, and she had to get to three hundred thirty-one. She had to look forward to that. Three hundred thirty-one.

“Katie?”

She swiped at the tears not yet to her eyes. Matt dropped to a knee beside her, a hand squeezing her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Katie couldn’t meet his gaze. “Clone.”

“She’s _not_ you.”

She laughed. Loud and hard and sharp. “Well aware of that. She’s friends with all of her teammates and even dating one, _the fucking traitor_ , and she’s helping them save the universe and making all these important discoveries and advancements, a-and she’s all smiley and sarcastic and strong and—” _clean_ “—and she can pilot Green, and she’s more Pidge than I am.” Her voice cracked, breaths quickened. “But if she’s Pidge then everything that happened with Lotor couldn’t have happened to Pidge, it happened to Katie, and if I’m Katie it happened to me.”

Matt’s free hand took her other shoulder, sudden and firm, making her jump as he forced her to look at him. “All she did was discover she was a clone, and with help from a lion. You broke away from Lotor, you tracked down the lions, you enabled us to save Allura, you brought the real Shiro back to everyone else. You restored Voltron. And you’re still my strong, brilliant gremlin of a sister.” His grip tightened, his earnest eyes imploring. “You aren’t what happened to you.”

“She has my memories,” she murmured, “She has my DNA, my _quintessence._ If we are different people, it’s only because of what happened to us in the last year, since we left the Druids. That’s the only thing separating me from her. _”_

“Well, you also have me, and I’d say that’s a definite improvement.” She snorted, not entirely of amusement, but he cocked a smile anyway. It wavered at the corners. “She has Lance and Keith and them, but you still can too if you want. I bet they still want to be your friends. You haven’t lost anything unless you want to lose it.”

He was right. All she had lost had been her choice. She squeezed her eyes shut against their stinging and shrunk away from him.

That, at least, Matt seemed to understand as he retracted his hands. “And if you don’t want to do this Voltron thing anymore, that just means you have more time with me to look for Dad.”

_You should have never left Lotor._ “It’s been five quintants.”

“He’s not dead!” His voice was so earnest she had to look at him. His fists pressed into his legs. “He’s not. We’re going to find him.”

Right, if he was dead, what would Lotor have to convince her to go home? She stood, keeping a hand to the back of the chair to support her unsteady legs. “We need to ask Keith if he can contact the Blade of Marmora about him. I know his prisoner ID, they just have to look that up.”

It would be easier to just go back. Everything had only gone wrong since she was taken from him. It wasn’t that bad there.

She left the Green Lion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the time you finish reading this, the first chapter of part two, Insatiability, should be up. Go! Watch Katie suffer! Now with more action and whump!  
> Thank you so much for reading and for the kudos. All feedback is loved! Have a wonderful life!


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